The Stars’ Tennis Balls (26 page)

– How much? I ask, coming back out of the crapper, eyes watering, heart pumping like a locomotive.

– Fifty a gram.

Fifty.
I mean, what? It was sixty fifteen years ago.
Fifty.
There’s got to be a catch.

– Come on, man. What’s the catch?

– Need you to take an ounce at a time. Got to get it off my hands.

– Look, I don’t have much cash on me at the moment.

– Got a card?

– You’re kidding. Thought for a second he meant a credit card. Oh, right. I give him my business card.

– Faces?
What’s that then?

– Model agency, the waiting staff out there. They’re mine.

– The look-alikes?

– We call them featured stand-ins in the business.

– Yeah, right. Look-alikes. And there’s me thinking that really was Prince Charles. The name’s John. Give us a call.

And off he goes, leaving me with over two grams in the wrap which he doesn’t even ask for back. Don’t remember much more of that day, I can tell you. And next day a whole ounce for only five hundred and fifty quid. That soon went, twenty-eight grams in five days.
Thirty
grams if you include the initial freebie. You’re burning the candle at both ends and the middle, Rufus.

The door-bell chimed and he got up from the sofa and went over to the entry-phone.

‘John.’

‘Oh hi. Come on up.

By the time John had got to the top of the stairs his face was streaked in sweat and he was wheezing like a perished accordion.

‘Christ,’ he gasped. ‘Haven’t you heard of lifts?’

‘Mm, sorry about that, mate.’

The flat was on the second floor but even Rufus, flabby, overweight and unfit as he was, could usually manage it without heaving and panting like a dying walrus.

‘Get you a voddie?’

‘Nah, I’m driving.’

Rufus poured one for himself and watched, out of the corner of his eye, as John took a baggie from his pocket and dropped it on the coffee table.

‘Chop one for yourself,’ said Rufus.

‘I’ll love you and leave you, mate.’

Oh, such bliss. So many dealers liked to hang around. Worse still, so many stayed at home and forced you to visit. It was the part of drug life that Rufus most hated. The enforced pretence of matiness. If you want a pork chop, all you have to do is go into a butcher’s shop, he reasoned. You order and walk out with the fucking thing in a bag. No chit-chat, no shit. No ‘cheers mate’. Visit a dealer for a supply of charlie on the other hand, and you’re in for an hour of droning views on music, sport, politics, genetically modified crops and the evils of the World Bank. A sensitive social dance had to be danced, to show that you didn’t think of the guy as a servant or social inferior. You had to pretend that the whole transaction had something to do with friendship and mutual studenty Bohemian cool. It was a relief that he got none of that bullshit from John.

Still, he thought, it would be nice to see him take a line just once. Just to show that he did. Dealers who didn’t use always made Rufus nervous and guilty.

‘Can I ask you something?’ John said as he stood in the doorway, ready to leave. He looked a little nervous.

‘Sure. Ask away.

‘You don’t fancy coming in with me on something bigger, do you?’

‘Bigger?’

‘It’s my brother, see. He keeled over with a heart attack a couple of weeks ago …

‘Oh, bummer,’ Rufus said. ‘I am sorry.’ And you’ll soon be following him, he added to himself. Not so much a gene pool, more a lard pool.

‘No, it’s not that. He was a streak of fucking piss as it goes. Couldn’t stand the sight of him. Only, fact is, he didn’t have no family besides me and I’ve inherited five kilos of his bleeding gear and I don’t know how to shift it. Found it in a cupboard when I was clearing his flat out.’

‘John, I’d love it. Believe me, I’d love it, it’s great gear but I don’t deal. I wouldn’t know where to begin.'

‘No, what I’m saying is that I heard tell of some guys up in Stoke Newington who might be in the market. Turkish boys. Thought you could come up with me and help push it through. I’d go sixty-forty with you.’

‘If you already know who these people are, why do you need me?’

‘Well, I don’t want to get ripped off. You, you’re a businessman, you’ve got the public school accent and all that, touch of class. They wouldn’t dare do the dirty on someone like you. Someone like me, they’d probably just take the stuff and dump me in an alley, you know what I mean?’

‘Sixty-forty?’

‘Yeah. Reckon that’s fair.’

Rufus did some reckoning of his own. A kilo is a thousand grams. Fifty thousand quid. Five fives are twenty-five, so that’s a quarter of a million. Forty percent of quarter a million is … one hundred thousand. A hundred grand.
A hundred grand.

‘You’re on,’ he said. ‘What kind of people are they?’

‘Well, they’re not boy scouts. They’re drug dealers, aren’t they? But business is business, I reckon. How’s Thursday night for you? I’ll give ‘em a bell and set it up. I can come and pick you up and we’ll drive there together.’

They shook on the deal and, as John waddled slowly down the stairs, Rufus sat down on the sofa and breathed out long and slow. A hundred grand. A hundred fucking grand.

With a hundred grand he could set up an international agency on the web. Look-alikes, singing telegrams, party events. He could have girls and boys across the globe, hired electronically. They would pay a registration fee, he would get them work. With his hundred grand he could design a ritzy pitch, artwork, dummy website, financial projections – the works. He’d take it to CotterDotCom and blow their minds with it. Might even get to meet the great Messiah himself.

Rufus dipped the corner of a credit card into the bag and dug out the biggest bump he’d ever sniffed in his life.

Breakfast time at the Fendemans’ was a confused affair that transcended age and gender expectations. Gordon ate nothing, but tried a different coffee or tea every day, Portia tucked into bacon, sausages and eggs and Albert, on the rare occasions he breakfasted at all, would eat nothing more than a slice of toast.

There were reasons for this. Albert rarely had appetite in the mornings. Anything that took him from his room and his computers he considered a waste of time. He had once spilled a cup of coffee over a USB hub and on another occasion the entire contents of a glass of orange juice had destroyed a printer. Portia, on the other hand, had discovered a new high protein diet. It was a regime that involved such a low intake of carbohydrates that she would check her urine each day with diabetic testing sticks to see how many ketones her body was leaking, much to the affectionate derision of her family. Gordon sampled different teas and coffees every day because tea and coffee constituted his trade. He usually spat the coffee out because he had inherited his father’s weak heart and the specialist disapproved of him ingesting caffeine. Java the cat ate whatever was going, but preferred pilchards in tomato sauce because he was peculiar.

On this particular morning however, Gordon was making a terrific mess in the kitchen because he had decided to experiment with cocoa. The fine powder was being transferred from surface to surface and from fingertips to finger-tips, which was causing panic.

‘Where’s my carbohydrate counter?’ Portia wailed.

‘Dad this stuff is getting
everywhere,’
complained Albert, coming into the kitchen and spreading his hands out in front of Gordon’s face. ‘Look at it. The more you try and dust it away, the more it gets ingrained into everything. I’ve got cocoa on my keyboard, cocoa on my screen and cocoa on my mouse.

‘Good lyrics,’ said Gordon, approvingly. ‘Come on, kiddo, it’s only powder. Try this mocha, it’s not bad.’

‘Nineteen grams per hundred!’ gasped Portia. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘No, hon,’ said Gordon, peering over her shoulder and dripping mocha coffee onto the pages of her book. ‘Those figures are for
sweetened
cocoa. Unsweetened is only three grams, see?’

‘All the same,’ said Portia crossly, pulling the book away from the drips, ‘you might be more careful.’

‘If you’ve ingested one hundredth of a milligram, I’d be amazed,’ said Gordon. ‘So, child of mine,’ he turned to Albert, who was assiduously scrubbing his hands under the sink. ‘How many hits yesterday?’

‘A new record. Three hundred and twenty-eight. From seven different countries. Not bad, huh?’

‘Not bad,’ conceded Gordon.

‘If only half of them, a
quarter
even, had placed orders, imagine how much that would be.’

‘We’re doing fine, Albie.’

‘I’m getting emails all the time asking if we sell direct. Every time I have to say no, I feel like we’re losing business.'

‘Selling to the public is a nightmare,’ said Gordon. ‘We’ve got all the supermarkets, let them do the work.’

‘Yeah but Dad, you’ve seen where they stack them. The lowest shelves, no special offers, no targeted advertising, no loyalty tie-ins, nothing.’

Portia went out to the hall to retrieve the newspapers and the post. This was an argument that she had heard a hundred times, ever since Gordon had first employed Albert to create his company website. She believed, with a wife and mother’s loyalty, that they were both right. Maybe the business should embrace e-commerce, as Albert thought. But maybe Gordon had a point too when he argued against the trouble and expense of guaranteeing secure transactions on the net and the added burden of costs that accrued with advertising, shipping and the extra staff who would have to be hired to handle the whole enterprise.

Café Ethica, founded by Gordon five years ago with money inherited from Portia’s mother Hillary, had become an enormous success. Gordon was the hero of students, eco-warriors, anti-capitalists and self-styled protectors of the third-world. Ethical Trading was the new big thing and Gordon’s courage in leaving his well-paid job as a successful commodity broker and striking out on his own, dealing direct with peasant farmers and co-operatives from the world’s poorest and most abjectly dependent cash-crop countries had transformed him into one of the country’s favourite businessmen. He had appeared on
Question Time
and
Newsnight
and, if he were to become a full British subject, many believed that he would be in line for a knighthood. Portia stayed out of the business and continued to plough her own furrow in academia. Albert had once offered to write web pages for her too, but she had gracefully declined. She found it hard to believe that a site devoted to Sienese tempera would be of much service either to her or to her students.

‘Pornography and a letter for you,’ she said now to her son, returning with the post. ‘Bills of course for us.

Pornography was Portia’s name for Albert’s preferred reading matter. Almost every day a different computer or web publishing magazine would hit the doormat and he would disappear with it into his bedroom, emerging several hours later with flushed cheeks and a faraway look in his eyes. If only the magazines really were pornography, she sometimes thought, wistfully. At least sex was something that she understood. The free CDs that came with the magazines filled the house. Portia, who liked to turn her hand to anything artistic to remind herself that she wasn’t just a dry professor and writer of obscure and expensive books, had created a number of amusing installations from them. There was a table whose top was constructed of nothing but America On Line giveaway disks, sealed in with perspex. There were silvery mobiles and sculptures all over the house. On her desk she had a number of stacks all glued together which she used as pen holders. In the kitchen they did service as coasters and place mats.

Albert, standing by the toaster, gave a gasp when he opened his single letter.

‘I don’t fucking believe it,’ he said, passing it to Gordon. ‘No, hang on. You don’t touch it till you’ve washed your hands. You read it first, Mum.’

Portia took the letter and held it to the window behind the sink. Presbyopia had come early to her. Too many slide shows and too much poring over too many documents in too many dark Tuscan libraries.

The letter was printed on expensive company stationery.

CotterDotCom

Dear Mr Fendeman,

Your name has come to our attention as the author and webmaster of The Café Ethica website. As you may know, our company has already acquired a unique name for excellence and innovation in the expanding world of electronic commerce. However, we are constantly looking for bright, imaginative and creative personnel to join us in our mission to continue to forge new businesses on the leading edge of the digital revolution. We believe that you may be just the kind of person we need.

If you are interested in visiting our London offices to discuss helping to set up and lead a new Ethical Trading Division, we would be delighted to talk to you about an employment package which we believe includes the most competitive share options, private health insurance, pension and bonus schemes in the field.

Your confidentiality in this matter would be appreciated.

Yours sincerely

Simon Cotter

Gordon took the letter from Portia.

‘It’s got to be a hoax,’ he said. ‘I mean, with the best will in the world, Albie, someone is pulling your bloody leg.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Albert snatching the letter from his father’s sudsy hands and going over to the telephone.

‘But darling,’ cried Portia. ‘What about Oxford?’ Albert was too busy dialling to pay any attention. They stood and watched as he talked nervously into the telephone. At one point he stood up straighter and Portia noticed that he was blushing slightly.

‘Three o’clock?’ he said. ‘Absolutely. No problem. Three o’clock. I’ll be there. Of course. Absolutely.’

He hung up, a dazed and ecstatic look on his face.

‘Well?’

‘I spoke to him! I actually spoke to him.’

‘You aren’t going to see him?’

‘Are you insane?’ Albert gave his mother a look of amazed disbelief. ‘Of course I’m going to see him! You heard. Three o’clock this afternoon. In his office.’

‘But you will tell him that you’re going to Oxford next October, won’t you? You will make it clear that you can’t even think of long term employment for at least three years.

‘Bugger Oxford. I’ve just spoken to Simon Cotter, Mum. Simon Cotter.’

‘And who’s he? Mother Theresa and Albert Schweitzer all rolled into one? Your education comes first.’

‘This will be my education.’

‘Has he any idea how young you are?’

‘Mum, there are people at CDC still awaiting their second set of teeth. There are millionaires working for Cotter with undescended testicles and training bras.’

‘Well that sounds encouraging, I must say. ‘You know what I mean. I wouldn’t be the youngest person there by a long way.

‘Gordon, tell him.’

Gordon had taken the letter back. Portia felt a wave of something coming from her husband that disturbed her.

Was it irritation? Not
envy
surely? She was shocked to realise, once the thought had flashed across her mind, that there could be no doubt of it. It was
envy.
Something in the way his tongue flicked over his lips and his eyes darted so quickly over the letter, as if still looking for proof that it was a hoax, told her that he was, beyond question, jealous of his own son. He was annoyed, he was resentful, he was angry. No one but Portia could have detected it, but it made her stomach turn over to see it.

‘Well now,’ said Gordon, assuming the measured tones of a wise and objective man of the world. ‘If you do go and see him, you make damned sure you don’t agree to anything –
anything,
without talking it through with us first. If there’s a contract we’ll make sure the company lawyers see it before you even think of signing. These people can be very convincing, very plausible but none the less…’

‘Sure Dad, sure. Jesus!’ Albert flashed a smile at both his parents and skipped from the room, a slice of toast between his teeth.

Oliver Delft hated politicians. Most people profess a dislike that springs from distaste at what they perceive as the hypocrisy, double-dealing and populist vulgarity of the breed. Delft disliked them for almost opposite reasons. It was their grindingly slow moral probity and obsession with ‘accountability’ that maddened him. Accountability in a double sense. Their pettifogging fixation with audits, financial openness and Treasury Rules was as numbingly odious to him as their perpetual nervous glances over the shoulder towards Commons Ethical Committees, “best practice guidelines” and investigative journalists. If a thing was to be done, then surely it should be done without qualms and scruples. Wavering and havering about morality was almost always, in Oliver’s view, the least moral option. He had warned them about Kosovo, Chechnya, Nigeria, East Timor, Zimbabwe, Myanmar – he could name a dozen little local cancers that could have benefited from the quick kindness of invasive surgery but had instead swollen and flourished in the name of ‘ethical foreign policy’ or ‘constructive engagement’ – the politicians had failed to listen and paid the price.

The secret world’s big secret was that it made a profit. This simple and surprising truth had saved Delft’s department from even more ministerial interference than he already suffered. Secrets made money and Britain (especially now that there were no ideological factors to complicate the world and make martyrs and traitors out of intellectuals and fanatics) retained a healthy balance of payments surplus with the rest of the world when it came to her trade in the dark arts. So long as those figures stayed on the right side of the ledger, ministers could be relied upon to allow Delft a freer hand than that enjoyed by any of his successors since the Second World War. Nevertheless, as far as Oliver was concerned, any interference was too much. It is a melancholy fact that shareholders in a company that makes a fat profit are greedier in chasing down every penny than shareholders in a company that breaks even or reports a small loss. Delft had siphoned off over the years enough to guarantee him an opulent retirement, but there was always room for more. For the moment however, his rectitude was beyond question. Every pony for his daughters and every necklace for his wife was bought with honest money from his meagre public salary and dwindling inheritance. That he had made provision for a better life in the future, no one could possibly guess. He was covered. In the meantime however, his surface life continued on its dull and grinding course. Today, for example, was a day of meetings.

He weathered the fortnightly RAM committee with his usual show of patience. The Resource Allocation Module had been the bright idea of a twenty-three-year-old wunderkind from Treasury and Oliver’s private contempt for the fashionable accountancy mechanisms dreamt up by such weird creatures knew no bounds. Old-fashioned double-entry book-keeping with quill and feint-margined foolscap was more secure and less easily manipulated. The RAM, however, used the latest ‘input engines’ and ‘nominal ledgering’ to model the department’s financial behaviour and (more importantly) it boasted its own logo, departmental colour-coding and screensaver. This made it the darling of ministers and entirely proof of criticism.

In a moment of weakness, Oliver had agreed to lunch with Ashley Barson-Garland to talk about his wretched Private Member’s Bill. They met at Mark’s Club in Mayfair. The good taste of the décor and the discreet expertise of the staff (‘Good afternoon, Sir Oliver.’ How the hell did they know his name? He needed people like that on his payroll) settled him into a better mood and by the time he had absorbed the menu he was ready to enjoy himself despite the prospect of political company.

Ashley arrived at the upstairs bar two minutes late and spent more than five minutes apologising in what Oliver guessed with a revolted shudder was supposed to be a charming and self-deprecating manner.

Oliver found it reassuring to remind himself that he was actually some six or seven years older than the balding, jowly and unappetising creature blathering beside him. Oliver’s secret vice was vanity. He had an interest in skin-care and male cosmetics that only his wife was aware of and no colleague or underling would ever have guessed at. Pomposity, ambition and bad soap had written themselves indelibly across Ashley’s features, Oliver noticed, much as gin and tropical sun used to print themselves on the complexion in the grand old days of Empire. A course of humectants, exfoliating creams and cell refreshant night masks would go some way to improving general skin tone, but very little could be done to help the folds of double chin and the dull glaze over the eyes. Perhaps these are nature’s way of warning us off, he thought.

‘I see they’ve shown you a menu,’ Barson-Garland said, when the tiresome story of his taxi ride from Westminster to Charles Street had finally wound to an end. ‘As to wines. Shall we go Burgundian? What do you think? There’s a mighty Corton Charlemagne to begin with and I happen to know they have recently added a La Tache that it would surely be madness to pass over.

Oliver was well aware that the only La Tache on the list cost over four hundred pounds a bottle. He suspected that Barson-Garland knew that Oliver would know this. Hum, he thought to himself. Trying to impress me, are you? Trying to soften me up? You in your Old Harrovian tie and Christ Church cufflinks. Jesus God, what kind of man wears college cufflinks?

They moved downstairs from the bar to the dining room. Barson-Garland had ordered a boiled egg crammed with Beluga caviar which he ate with repulsive elegance as he talked.

‘Let me first of all assure you that I am not here to enlist your support for my Bill,’ he said. ‘That would be quite improper. Quite improper. However, as you may be aware, there remains a certain level of confusion about the implications of my proposals both within and without the House. There are those who cast doubt on the Bill’s technical, legal and practical feasibility. It depends, as you know, upon the creation of a new body, something akin to America’s National Security Agency. Our own GCHQ won’t quite answer. I’m sure you agree with me there.’

Oliver moved his head in a manner that might have been interpreted as a nod.

‘Quite so. My proposed agency would have considerable, even awe-inspiring powers. We already have satellites that scan the surface of our world, but I am suggesting an electronic capability that would allow us to scan, as it were,
beneath
the surface. We have the macrocosm, let us help ourselves to the microcosm. There are those who fear that I am taking, as the
Guardian
put it only this morning, one hell of a civil liberty.’

Oliver made another non-committal movement of the head. A nauseating vision arose in his head of Barson-Garland pasting his press reviews into an album and sending them to his mother.

‘It seems to me,’ Ashley went on, delicately pressing at the corners of his mouth with a napkin, ‘that I need a trusted figure, someone of irreproachable integrity and proven expertise in the field of security, who is willing to shoulder the responsibility of building such an agency from the ground up. If it were known in the right quarters that a man of the reputation of Sir Oliver Delft might be prepared to take the job on…’ Barson-Garland took a prim sip of wine and let the thought hang.

‘I have not heard anything,’ Oliver said, ‘that leads me to believe that your Bill will meet with success.

‘Naturally not. The Bill will fail. That is axiomatic. We take it as read and move on. The issue will have been laid out, you see. That is the point. The possibility of government having such power within its grasp will have been propounded. The genie, as it were, will be out of the bottle. Such tedious niceties as open debate will have to, ah, take a powder.’

‘I hate to remind you of this, B-G, but you are not in government. You are in opposition.’

‘Oh, as to that,’ Ashley waved his hand, ‘while a week may be a long time in politics, a decade is but a passing breath. The Blessed Margaret already feels like a distant dream, does she not? His Toniness too will disappear into the vacuum history in a twinkling. I am sure you agree with me that it is in the interests of your service to take a longer, more strategic view. My suggestion is that you and I develop an informal relationship. Consider it as a wager on the future. I have no doubt that you have cultivated unpleasantly ambitious politicians like myself before now. You see? I have at least the virtue of self-knowledge.’

‘If I were to suggest to my masters that I do favour the idea of an agency along the lines you have proposed, how would that benefit you?’

‘It would benefit the
country,’
said Ashley. ‘That may sound sententious, but I happen to believe it to be true. It would also establish my credentials in the field. Opposition provides few opportunities to do more than talk. The popularity of my bill amongst some journalists and much of the public is one thing, but I need to demonstrate to my party that I am capable of treading my way around the dark and slippery corridors that people like you inhabit without coming an arser. You follow?’

‘Mm,’ said Oliver. ‘I think I do.’ Barson-Garland put him in mind of those poison toads whose heads were said to contain jewels. Ugly and dangerous, to be sure, but offering the possibility of great riches none the less if handled properly.

‘There is nothing unethical about mutual advantage,’ said Ashley, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Quite the reverse, I should say.

‘Do you remember when we first met?’ Oliver asked.

Ashley seemed a little taken aback by the question. ‘Well now, let me see,’ he said, twisting the stem of his wine glass and screwing up his piggy eyes. ‘I pride myself on a fair memory. I fancy it may have been at the
Telegraph
Christmas party in Brooks’s club. December nineteen eighty-nine.’

‘No, no,’ said Oliver. ‘We met many years before that. You were still a schoolboy.’

A terrible image arose in Ashley’s mind of furtive liaisons in Manchester public lavatories long ago. ‘Really?’ he said with a ghastly attempt at a smile. ‘I’m not sure I quite understand. When and where might that have been?’

The dark crimson flooding Ashley’s face and the flash of fear leaping into his eyes had not escaped Oliver’s attention. ‘Catherine Street,’ he said, watching carefully. ‘You were working for Charles Maddstone. Private secretary, personal assistant, something like that.’