Vance was without that English apologetic tic in the forebrain which moderated self-congratulation.
His arms waved above his head in broad, unquestioning gestures. The money-men, the politicians, the executives, the advisers all of them were people from whom he had masked himself behind his money and his most trusted deputies, even behind his dazzling wife. His long hair, his sweaters, his apparent naivety; all had been de fences against intrusion, bolsters of an assurance he found it difficult to maintain.
He sipped more champagne.
Bright chatter, then, or amusing asides. He sensed his path through this forest of money, influence and dependence in the role they forced upon him St. George, riding to Vance's rescue. The sound Englishman.
It must be the pepper-and-salt in his hair that gave him the appearance of maturity over Vance, since the American was ten years older than himself. His hands, too, began to wave, like those of Vance; smaller, politer imitations. The marquee became hot with bodies and success.
The mingling of expensive perfumes and aftershaves was heady. He clipped his glass to the plate on which a helping of salmon and salad had arrived, un requested He pecked at the food, his excitement unable to digest. Nodding as he listened to a Phoenix matron inviting him to her salon.
"A great shame," he murmured, 'but I'll be back in London before Thursday… Of course, on my next visit. Delighted!"
The matron floated away, having tamed if not captured him. He smiled after her.
Charlotte was definitely required on his next visit, if he was to trawl the Phoenix social world… He must ring her and the boys, tell them the plane had flown and he would be home a day early. What time was it in London? He glanced at his watch surreptitiously. Seven hours' difference, was it…? It was — time for tea or G-and-T in Holland Park. He grinned a private pleasure and glanced towards the entrance of the marquee. The desert seemed to smoke with heat rather than dust-Vance? Alan Vance was outside, and a man in shirtsleeves was gesticulating in what might have been anger… No, the anger the baffled fury was all Vance's.
Smiling, nodding, sidling, Burton moved towards the gap of desert between the canvas and flounces. Voices caught at him like gentle hands, but he managed to evade them. Vance's features were thunderous with knowledge and rage.
"What is it Alan? What is it?"
Vance turned to him, his eyes like those of something dangerous, cornered and wounded, but far from finished. Something that wanted to hurt, damage.
"What is it?" he repeated inadequately.
The my plane… it's gone down. Crashed. The crew's not answering.
It's gone down, Tim. My plane crashed—" The image of Her Majesty stepping from the fuselage of the Skyliner into a hot, tropical light and a breeze that ruffled cotton dresses and unsecured hats became that of the news reader then the symbolic portcullis of the House of Commons as the channel returned to its coverage of a Commons Select Committee.
At once, Giles Pyott sat forward in his armchair, to Aubrey's renewed amusement. He sighed with gentle mockery and Pyott, swilling the clinking ice in his glass of gin and tonic, acknowledged the noise with an inclination of his head.
The Chairman of the European Affairs Select Committee was an MP known to both himself and Giles Pyott. He had been an unsuccessful Foreign Office junior minister and later had spent an equally fruitless sojourn at MoD. In the former post he had buckled before Aubrey, in the latter had been implacably opposed by Giles.
But he was rabidly pro-European, of the party of government, and his present eminence was thus fully accounted. Seated next to him was Giles' daughter, his shining girl as only Aubrey, Clive Winterborne and Giles himself were ever allowed to call her. In riposte, they were still to her, even in their collective dotage, the three musketeers. As the sound of her voice was faded up her first words making her father chuckle with indulgent approval, as if he were witnessing some kind of successful training exercise for a violent assault by special forces Marian was haranguing the man giving evidence to the Committee; the CEO of Aerospace UK, Sir Bryan Coulthard. He appeared sullenly resentful, despite the media coaching he must have had over the years and especially just prior to this appearance on the box.
Money, Aubrey thought it was always money. A tropical storm of it, running down the drains of the European Union, disappearing into the sands of corruption, grandiose dreams, bureaucracy. In his retirement, he had found a lofty, indulgent aloofness. Giles, because his daughter was angry at waste, incompetence, corruption. and Europe was angry in his turn. He sipped with a quiet, satisfied savagery at his drink as the industrial knight inadequately fended off the redoubtable Marian.
Aubrey recollected the bloated, gleaming fuselage of the Skyliner from which the monarch was disembarking on the news film. British Airways had two of them, employed for junkets, tourist trips, celebrating Lottery winners and the like. The costs of production had escalated become mountainous — and the airlines jibbed at buying what was yet another pompous, Louis Quatorze-like dream of European glory by France and the UK with the full complicity of the European Commission in Brussels. Indeed, it was a dream more like those of Brussels than his own country for Aerospace UK it had been born of desperation at the end of the Cold War… and it was too damned expensive for anyone to buy, this future of airline travel, as it was usually touted. Even Her Majesty's endorsement on her State Visits would hardly recommend it to realistic, hard-headed airline chairmen around the world.
"Your shining girl's fishing," he murmured, glancing into his malt whisky and catching a scent of the beef Mrs. Grey was preparing for his dinner with Giles.
"She's bluffing."
"Ah, Kenneth but Coulthard doesn't know that," Pyott replied in triumph. No one was as clever as his girl, no one quicker on their feet than his only daughter.
Outside, home-going traffic was muted and the sunlight lay strongly on Regent's Park. Aubrey stirred comfortably in his armchair, enjoying the restrained interrogation.
"Why won't they buy his dream, Giles that Skyliner thing? Cost alone?"
"Probably. Ludicrous situation," Pyott barked.
"As far as I can understand it—" This is Marian's view, is it, to which I'm to be treated?"
Giles Pyott snorted with laughter.
"A hit, I do confess as much… yet, it is. It's the old sad story — overcapacity in the industry and falling revenues. They want cheap, as she puts it, not flashy!
"But they won't buy American planes either."
They'll have to start replacing their fleets soon and it's either American or it's this costly bugger. Brothel with wings, Marian calls it." Aubrey laughed.
"But Coulthard and the Frogs are sweating over Marian's acquaintance, Tim Burton, and his choice of plane. That is cheap relatively… HMG and the French have poured so much money into developing the damned Skyliner they won't bale out the airlines with subsidies to buy. Then we have another Concorde on our hands."
"With this difference BA was the national carrier back then and government could make them buy Concorde. Now they're in the private sector, they think they've done enough by taking two on appro and flying the champagne and gold medallion set on junkets." Pyott tossed his head, still thickly crowned with grey hair. His aquiline profile appeared bleak in expression. Full-face, Giles found it harder to frown effectively. The retired soldier gestured at the screen, absorbed in his daughter's casual, intent duel with Coulthard.
Aubrey had heard as much in the whispering gallery of the Club, and elsewhere where he still encountered men of present or resigned power.
The Skyliner was a luxury, ocean-going liner of the air, a grandiloquent gesture appropriate to a more extravagant age. It was opulently appointed, it attempted to carry too many passengers, its engines were inefficient by comparison with the newest generation of propulsion units, its sumptuousness ruined its payload-to-range-to-price equation. It was an overdraft, negative equity, a spendthrift gesture quite out of tenor with the straitened times.