Up Against the Night Read online

  Nellie and I ride for an hour and a half. As we arrive at the old airstrip, unused since the war, the horses know what’s coming: this is the gallop, the last hurrah. Off we go with a bound: soon my ears are cold and my nose is stinging as the horses’ hooves thrum on the ground; this thrumming is one of the most thrilling sounds imaginable. And also one of the most feared in history. I think of cavalry charges in films and Cossack pogroms and country racecourses where you hear the horse-timpani rising from a distant hollow and coming ever closer until the horses themselves suddenly appear at the top of a hill, a mist escaping from them into the cold air.

  On her first visit to the forest, Nellie introduced me to wild mushrooms; she spotted morels peering coyly from a hollow under beech trees. For her the natural world is a gift we must honour; it may be that up in the Nordic lands there is a more recent memory of the importance of relying on nature to survive. After all, the Vikings were the last pagans of Europe. When I dreamt of Nellie a few nights ago, I saw her in forests of spruce, weaving through the trees and leaving tracks in the snow. Nellie told me with pride that the oldest tree in the world, Old Tjikko, a spruce, is in Sweden. Over nine thousand years old. Beat that if you can.

  Now the horses begin to slow down; soon they are trotting and then walking, at the same time snatching at their bridles in the eagerness to get home. I wonder sometimes how we came to enslave horses and other domestic animals. The somnolent sheep on my Tannie Marie’s farm walked listlessly, heads down, like slaves, like inmates of a gulag.

  Josie, one of the stable girls, is waiting. She holds the horses as we dismount. Her cheeks are very red – the redness is symmetrical, forming perfect red discs – like Victorian German dolls.

  ‘Was he all right, Blaze?’ Josie asks.

  ‘Lovely. We had a great ride.’

  ‘Nothing will replace Rocket.’

  ‘No. And I wouldn’t want it to.’

  ‘He was a one-off.’

  I am touched. The kindness of these girls, expressed through their concern for horses, moves me. I understood some time ago that many English people in the countryside see talking about their dogs or horses as a kind of overture to conversation, or even a ploy to avoid serious conversation.

  Nellie takes my hand as we walk to the car. She wants to see the Rufus Stone. Not far from here, William Rufus, the son of William the Conqueror, was killed by an arrow in 1100 when he was hunting. His death was probably an assassination, the arrow fired by Walter Tirel on the orders of the King’s brother, Henry, who succeeded to the throne.

  The Rufus Stone purports to mark the exact spot where William Rufus was killed, but there is no certainty. The hunting party galloped away, leaving the body where it lay. The plaque reads:

  Here stood the oak tree, on which an arrow shot by Sir Walter Tirel at a stag glanced and struck King William the Second, surnamed Rufus, on the breast, of which he instantly died, on the second day of August, anno 1100.

  Nellie holds my hand insistently. Two hikers arrive, striding in blue and green cagoules, as though they are expecting a blizzard. The English love to dress up for a hike; outdoor clothing is popular in these parts. They say hello grudgingly, giving the impression that they think we have cheated by coming here in a car, without the requisite seriousness of purpose. I imagine that they think we are insensitive to the events of a thousand years ago. The man reads part of the inscription out loud, as if his wife can’t read: ‘King William the Second, surnamed Rufus, being slain as before related was laid in a cart belonging to one Purkis and drawn from here to Winchester and buried in the Cathedral Church of that city.’

  Purkis is a minor player in this drama, standing for the common man.

  ‘History is so much about murder,’ Nellie says.

  From what I know of my ancestor’s life, I would have to agree with her.

  7

  Nellie has to go to Kent to take Bertil home from school to pack and get ready. Bertil must have Vilebrequin swimming trunks; everybody at his school has them. I often see the shop in Piccadilly because it is next to a place that sells wonderful macaroons. I suggested Nellie should take my car, and I would take her Volvo to the garage for a service.

  My phone rings.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good, it’s you, the hairy colonial. See how I have to scrape the barrel if I want some halfway decent conversation? I am dying of tedium. Ennui, as philosophers call it. It is so fucking boring in the country. Thank God you are here. Where’s the lovely Nellie? Okay, I will have to make do with you. I can’t stand living here. If I see another fucking dwarf pony I will run it over in my car. You wouldn’t believe just how fucking dull it is. I should never have come to live here. If you don’t have a dog or a horse or a fly rod, you might as well slash your wrists. The people in my village – it’s literally mine – all talk about nothing except dogs and point-to-points and foxes. If you move one brick they rush round to English Heritage or the council to object. I don’t think they would have a fucking clue how to conduct a conversation if they couldn’t talk about their dogs or horses. They are always at the vet, laying out vast amounts of dosh. One woman I know spent a thousand pounds having a lesion removed from her parrot’s beak. And then it fell off the perch. And when you get asked to dinner the food is always the same – something they have bodged up from the Waitrose recipe cards in Winchester. I have booked the Longdog for dinner tonight. Does that suit? Good, see you about 7.30.’

  ‘Lovely. See you there, thanks.’

  A few years ago my friend Alec sold his shares in his hedge fund and bought a country house and two farms. The rumour in the City was that he was pushed out. His house looks over the finest trout river in England, the Test, but after an initial burst of enthusiasm he decided he loathed fish and fishing. He said he hated seeing the beautifully marked but brainless creatures gasping on the bank. Also he thinks that all the florid fishing lore that was developed in the area is complete nonsense – woo-woo. And one more thing, he thinks trout are inedible. They taste of damp laundry, he says.

  He tried golf but he gave that up too; he hadn’t realised it was so difficult. Particularly with all those fucking ponies wandering about the course. The truth is he was at his happiest wheeling and dealing in the City and now he is missing the life. He is said to have helped a private bank avoid bankruptcy in 2009 with some unorthodox financial manoeuvres, and he made another ten million when the bank recovered. He was eased off the board and only a few months later Lavinia died; without knowing, she had been harbouring a virulent brain tumour for some years. It grew like a giant onion. She had loved visiting all the classic gardens in the south of England, and Alec would go along, sulking loudly, but after her death he could not cope and suffered depression for months.

  I am more than happy to have dinner with him. He didn’t like Georgina – many people have told me this since our divorce – but there may be equal numbers who say the same of me to her supporters. Sometimes they are disparaging about my origins, as though there is something half-formed about South Africans, a certain crudity. African tribes believe that the hyena is so ugly because when God made them he ran out of clay, condemning the hyena to a sloping back and a furtive manner. In this way, some people think there is something comical, even deficient, about South Africans.

  Alec gave me my first job when I arrived in England. He was starting up a stockbroking firm. I had dropped out of Oxford, a fact that Alec never mentioned. He introduced me to all his clients: ‘Frank McAllister, Oxford man, colonial unfortunately, but it can’t be helped.’

  In the beginning Alec paid me £60 a week to answer the phone to his clients and then to engage these clients with my playful and caressing manner; Alec believed that that was the hallmark of an Oxford man. He made me a partner after a year and for the first time I had some money. We parted very amicably four years later and I went to work in a property company, which was a good time to be in property. Houses could be bought and cheaply renovated; it was then that
I met Georgina, who was thinking of setting up a small hotel. She thought I was the foreman, which in a sense I was. I could only afford to pay one full-time bricklayer.

  Alec loves Nellie. She seems to appeal to all my friends. I am sure they wonder what she sees in me.

  *

  The Longdog has been painted in fashionable Farrow & Ball colours recently. I like these colours; we have used them in the house. I am early, so I walk out to the river for a few minutes. The trout are rising, sipping at the water. Just on the bend of the river someone is fishing, almost as though he had been put there to complete the picture.

  Alec arrives. He is wearing narrow, strawberry-coloured trousers, so drawing attention to his waistline, which has gone freelance. On his finger he has a large signet ring. Since he left the City, he no longer creates much of an eddy in a confined space. I haven’t ever fully understood him, although I have come to see that, underneath the commotion, he is a kind man. We often talk about our children. He has three, all of whom are nightmares, according to him. One of his, a boy, took drugs and it was Alec who told me about the place in California. We sit at his special table and he begins a sort of interrogation-cum-flirtation with the waitress, who is young and nervous, with a soft, innocent face.

  ‘When it says “burrata”’ – he stabs the menu with his forefinger – ‘is that really what you have? Not just some two-week-old mozzarella made in a factory in Basingstoke and dunked in water?’

  There is an insistent and disturbing quacking tone in his voice.

  ‘I’ll ask the chef, sir.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I will have the burrata and heritage tomatoes for a starter. Sweetbreads for a main. Oh, maybe, before you vanish, can you tell me something: what does “heritage” mean in this context? No? I can tell you, it means bollocks, designed for the gullible. And you, Frankie, what are you going to have?’

  ‘Steady Alec, you’re making her anxious.’

  Alec is the only person who calls me Frankie. The waitress scuttles off with our order, probably hoping not to be brought before the inquisition again.

  ‘So what’s happening in your life? Are you okay, dear man?’

  ‘I’m fine, Alec. Me, Nellie, her son, Bertil, and Lucinda are going to Cape Town to my house for a month or more. Will you come for a week or so?’

  ‘I need a break. I haven’t had a decent holiday since I don’t know when.’

  ‘Oh please, you were in Croatia on somebody’s boat for two weeks, look at you, still as brown as a nut, then you were in New York and the Hamptons, and then you went skiing.’

  ‘Yes, and then I fell all the way down the fucking Vallée fucking Blanche. I am lucky to be alive. I ended up in a crevasse, fortunately not too deep. The guide laughed. He asked me if I had seen any fish down there. La pêche est bonne? An old Alpine joke, apparently. I wanted to kill him, but as he was lowering a rope to pull me out, I kept quiet.’

  ‘How’s Jacqui? Still seeing her?’

  ‘Not often. In fact not at all.’

  He lowers his voice: ‘She is a sex fiend. Terrifying. I felt I had to go to the gym before she came over. And the gorgeous Nellie, is she as wonderful as always?’

  ‘She’s changed my life. Really. I know, I know what you are thinking. The truth is Georgina dragged me down over the years – perhaps I dragged myself down – but I was unhappy a lot of the time. It is as if Nellie is the polar opposite of Georgina. By the way, do you know Georgina is trying to have a baby?’

  ‘Turkey-baster job, I hear.’

  ‘If by that you mean in vitro fertilisation administered by some incredibly posh gynaecologist in Harley Street – yes, it’s a turkey-baster job. The worst thing is that my best man’s friend has donated his sperm. It makes me sick to think about it.’

  I feel guilty for going along with broadcasting this potential tragedy. A tragedy in waiting, mostly for Georgina, I think. She is not one of the world’s natural mothers. She wants the credit for being a mother without really liking children or wanting her life to be disrupted.

  ‘It’s probably better that he delivered the sperm in a glass tube through a hatch,’ Alec says, ‘rather than by the old-school method. Look, just don’t think about it. It’s a way – admittedly a rather Byzantine way – of getting at you.’

  At this moment the burrata arrives. Under the circumstances it has a gynaecological look as it sits limply on a plate. Alec is silent and absent for a moment. His face is drained of life, and it has a chalk-white dryness I haven’t seen before, as though his human essences have dried up and he has become the outline of what was once a ruthless businessman. He has lived his whole life believing that England is a kind of sceptred isle, but now he blames the country for his decline. As if to confirm that a certain creeping tackiness has entered his life, I have heard that he is having a relationship with a lap dancer, which is just the sort of thing that will certainly end in disaster.

  ‘Are you okay, Alec?’

  ‘Sorry, old boy. I have low blood pressure, and it comes on when I think of Lavinia. You know I am in a new relationship?’

  ‘I heard you had taken up with a lap dancer.’

  ‘She’s a sweet girl, a student, filling in time as lap dancer, and I am helping her get to university. She wants to be an anthropologist.’

  ‘Jesus, are you sure you haven’t made this up? What’s your role? To pay her tuition fees?’

  ‘Frank, listen, I’m sorry to throw up on your shoes, but I feel completely lost. I know I am making a complete arse of myself. She’s Latvian by the way. From Riga.’

  ‘Oh good, that makes all the difference. The Latvians are the aristocrats of the Baltic.’

  ‘Don’t, please. I never expected to be this lonely and so lacking in self-esteem and generally so ridiculous. One week after leaving the board I was a forgotten man. And also I just somehow never bargained for being ousted or for Lavinia’s death.’

  He looks terrible – etiolated and wilting. His whole aspect has changed; the former titan of finance has become one of those men who lose their dignity and their dress sense soon after they lose office and try to demonstrate that they are still in the game. Some of them take to wearing broad felt hats and jaunty caps from Jermyn Street, which never rest naturally on old people. I am guessing that his liaison with a Baltic lap dancer was intended to suggest youthfulness, but his clothes carry a different message, one of desperation. His hair, I now see, has been dyed, which is seldom a good idea for middle-aged and elderly men. Just beneath his ears, his hair has become unevenly ginger, where once it was greying. His ears have an inquisitive look, as they poke out –questing fungi – from under his Icelandic-pony-coloured hair.

  Alec is so sombre by the time he climbs into his Jaguar, with the help of his chauffeur, that I fear for him. He lives not far away in an ugly pile with fifteen bedrooms. Like many people who have been successful in business, he believes he has talent as a designer. He is wrong, the house is a jarring mishmash. His children apparently avoid him, and the house. I wonder if the lap dancer is waiting for him there now.

  As I drive home to the forest I think about what Alec said about his state of mind. Is this what waits for us all, a kind of cruel humiliation in old age? It is frightening how fragile a life can be; a paper-thin divide separates one life from another, one fate from another, one choice from another. There is no certainty, no fulfilment. All is arbitrary. All is ultimately darkness.

  When I arrive at the house, deep in the ancient wood, I see the light I left on as a beacon of hope, spilling out onto the path to the front door. Two ponies are lying down just beyond the garden fence. Their comfortable outlines are blurred as though they had been drawn with a soft charcoal pencil.

  As I enter the house I find that my phone is signalling a message. I don’t recognise the American number. Who would call at this time of night? It might be Lucinda. I go to voicemail. Someone, a man, is crying. It’s painful. Then I hear my name. ‘Oom Frank, Oom Frank, waar is jy? Asseblieftog,
Oom, ek het jou nood.’

  It is my Cousin Jaco: in Afrikaans he is begging me to help him. Maybe he doesn’t want others to know what he is saying. But now he breaks into English. It takes me a moment to realise he is talking about the Scientologists.

  ‘Oom, they say I may only leave the church by paying $75,000 which is the fees what my training have cost. They is crazy. I am in deep shit, Oom. Can you send this money to their lawyers in Los Angeles, please, please? I will pay you back even if I must work to the end of my life. I promise. I make you a covenant, on the name of Piet Retief. You must please call this number in LA. It is the lawyer who negotiate this kind of thing. Asseblieftog, Frank.’

  ‘Okay, give me the number.’

  I am not persuaded by his evocation of Piet Retief as guarantor. Jaco reads the number, stumbling. He is deeply distressed; his voice has an unstable and snivelling content. I try the phone number and get through to a lawyer’s office. It is called Asphalter and Gersbach.

  I say that I am calling on behalf of my cousin, Mr Jaco Retief, who is apparently being prevented from leaving the Church of Scientology.

  ‘I don’t think that is correct, Mr … What did you say your name is? Right, Mr McAllister, that is not true, one hundred per cent wrong.’

  ‘Cut the bullshit. My cousin believes he can only leave by making a payment.’

  ‘We don’t tolerate foul language. Please don’t violate our office again. Your cousin is in arrears with the money he owes to the Church for their teaching over nearly sixteen months and also for accommodation.’

  ‘Do you or don’t you want to be paid?’

  ‘I will put you through to Mr Asphalter. Just one moment please, sir.’

  After a minute or two, Asphalter answers.

  ‘Yes, sir. I believe you are the cousin of Mr Jaco Retief?’

  ‘Yes, that is true. Look, he says he has to pay to be allowed to go, and he has asked me to help.’