He tries to eat some soufflé. Then he puts his fork down next to the heavy, expensive plate and waits for Adrian to finish.
‘Something wrong with it?’ Adrian asks, still feeding himself.
‘No, it’s very good. I’m just not hungry.’
‘Oh?’
Again, Aleksandr tries to smile.
‘Are you alright, mate?’ Adrian asks. ‘You look very pale.’
‘I’m tired.’
‘Yes, you seem a bit tired. What have you been up to? Tell me.’
Unable to think of anything else, Aleksandr says, ‘Ksenia’s leaving me.’
Adrian looks pained. ‘Oh, I am sorry,’ he says.
The turbot in chive-and-butter sauce arrives. Someone tops Adrian up with Lafon Perrières.
Aleksandr just looks at the dead fish on his plate while Adrian, with silver knife and fork, starts expertly to prise his apart.
5
Ampleton House, on the outskirts of Ottershaw in Surrey, is not visible from the road. Only a high wall, and the tops of the tall trees in the famous arboretum, nearly leafless now, are visible. Darkness is falling when they arrive. The long, turning driveway takes them to the expanse of gravel in front of the mansion — Sir Edwin Lutyens, 1913 — where the Maybach and the Range Rover pull up. ‘Here we are, sir,’ Doug says through the intercom, as if his employer might be asleep.
Aleksandr is not asleep. He is just sitting in the silent, padded interior of the Maybach, wishing that he never had to leave it. For a moment he even wonders whether to ask Doug to take him back to London.
‘Here we are, sir,’ Doug says again. His voice sounds tired. He has been on duty since early in the morning, waiting at Farnborough for the Falcon to arrive.
Normally, someone would have emerged from the house by now, with an umbrella, and opened the door for him, and held the umbrella over him as he walked over the wet gravel to the house and into the double-height hall.
The staff, however, are all on leave, or in the London house.
So it is Madis who opens the door of the Maybach for him, and lets him into the house, and, having dealt with the alarm, turns on the lights in the hall.
He asks him whether he needs anything.
‘No,’ Aleksandr answers.
‘I’ll be in the flat,’ Madis says, ‘if you need anything.’
Madis lives in a flat with a separate entrance, at the side of the house, in what was once the stable yard.
‘Okay. Thank you, Madis,’ Aleksandr says.
Alone, he unwinds his scarf and sits down in the hall.
He shuts his eyes, tries to stop thinking.
Wherever his thoughts wander they find something that hurts.
Like the face of Adam Spassky — the way he smiled as the judge delivered her verdict.
His thoughts move from the unendurable humiliation of that moment to the practical fact of his poverty. And then to the humiliation again. And then the poverty. There seems to be nothing else — only those two things.
And he would be able to stomach the loss of his money, he thinks, if it weren’t for the humiliation. And he would be able to take the humiliation, just, if he still had his money — though of course the loss of the money is part of it. The sheer idiocy of losing so much money. His other humiliations, however, would not be so total if he still had the money — the money itself would be a sort of answer to them, as it was always an answer to everything in the past.
He is still just sitting there in the hall, holding his scarf in his hands.
—
Madis opens the door. He seems surprised to see Aleksandr standing there, in the damp darkness.
‘Madis.’ Aleksandr is trying to smile. ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you.’
‘No,’ Madis says.
‘I was wondering.’ The situation is definitely more awkward than Aleksandr thought it would be. ‘Would you like to have a drink with me?’
Madis is wearing a T-shirt, tracksuit trousers, has no shoes on, only white sports socks on his feet. There is the sound of a television from somewhere in the flat. He says, ‘I…I don’t drink.’
‘Oh, of course,’ Aleksandr says. ‘I forgot. Okay.’
Madis, perhaps out of embarrassment, says nothing.
‘Well,’ Aleksandr says. His shoulders are hunched against the frigid darkness — the temperature has dropped and over his silk shirt he is wearing only a thin black sweater. ‘Goodnight, then.’
‘Goodnight, boss,’ Madis says.
He is just shutting the door of the flat when Aleksandr, who has turned to leave, says, ‘Oh, Madis.’
The door is half-open. Madis is looking out at him.
‘You don’t have anything to eat, do you?’ Aleksandr asks, with a small laugh. ‘It’s just that…In the kitchen…There doesn’t seem to be…’
Madis hesitates for a moment. Then he says, ‘Sure.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Aleksandr laughs. ‘It’s embarrassing.’
‘No, sure,’ Madis says. ‘No problem.’ And then he says, ‘I’m just eating now, in fact. Do you want to join me?’
‘Well, I don’t want to disturb you…’
‘No, don’t worry about it,’ Madis says.
‘Okay then. It’s very kind of you.’
Madis opens the door and steps aside to let Aleksandr in.
It is the first time he has seen the inside of Madis’s flat. Madis leads him into a living room with a small dining table and a sofa and a TV which is switched on and showing the early-evening news, and some pictures on the walls. A framed print of Titian’s Allegory of Prudence.
‘Lamb rogan josh,’ Madis says. ‘That okay?’
‘Fine. Of course.’
And then Madis says, as if something has just occurred to him, ‘It’s a supermarket one.’
‘Fine.’
He leaves Aleksandr standing there, and in the small kitchen puts another Tesco’s Finest lamb rogan josh into the microwave.
Madis, Aleksandr knows, lives there with his wife Liz. He is Estonian, originally. He emigrated to the United States as a teenager, and served in the army there, in some sort of special forces unit. He was in Iraq.
He must be about forty. Not very tall. Stocky.
He speaks English with a strange accent.
‘It’ll take a few minutes,’ he says, emerging from the kitchen.
‘Where’s Liz?’ Aleksandr asks.
‘She’s out,’ Madis says. ‘Sit down.’
It sounds almost like an instruction.
‘Thank you,’ Aleksandr says, and sits.
Madis turns off the TV.
Which was perhaps a mistake. There is just silence now — just the hum of the microwave from the kitchen.
Aleksandr sits at the table, and looks at his hands.
There is something strange about the way he is sitting there, looking at his hands, not speaking.
He looks up, and finds Madis watching him. Madis is standing near the kitchen door, waiting for the microwave to finish. ‘It’ll be done in a minute,’ he says.
‘What’s the best way to die?’ Aleksandr asks him. His eyes are shining, as though with tears.
‘The best way to die?’ Madis says, surprised.
‘Yes.’
‘The best way…The best way is to die happy.’
‘No, I didn’t mean…’
The microwave pings.
Madis, in the kitchen, peels back the heat-darkened plastic foil of the packaging and spoons the food onto two plain white plates. He takes the plates to the table and puts them on the straw place mats, then returns to the kitchen for the knives and forks.
‘Thank you,’ Aleksandr says.
They start to eat in silence.
Aleksandr does not seem to want to eat after all — he just pushes the food around the plate.
Eventually he stops, and sits there, while Madis, embarrassed, finishes his own meal.