There was an instant, when one of the three cats jumped up amongst the cheeses and the fruits on the table and put its nose into the butter dish, when it seemed that village ways had made the journey into town. But Rook’s raised eyebrow and his nod brought that fantasy and the cat’s adventure to an end. A waiter, none too practised in the ways of cats, removed the creature from the butter, lifting it clear by its hind legs as if it were a rabbit destined for the pot.
The music ended. Rook nodded once again, and all the staff, following the details of his memo to them earlier that day, left Victor’s room and returned to their screens, their telephones, their desks, their manifests of trade in crops. The Band Accord played — largamente — at the far end of the room. The guests sat down to the silent whiteness of the tablecloth, while the waitresses served the coddled fish. Rook, bidding everybody Bon appetit, left Victor to hold court and joined Anna and her staff for flattened cakes — and more champagne — in the outer rooms. Later on, when Victor had been softened by the meal, he’d enter with the birthday chair.
The meal, in fact, was not as perfect as the cook had hoped. The perch, despite their freshness, were just a little high, a touch too bladdery. They had not travelled well. Only one guest, his palate bludgeoned by the pipe he smoked, dispatched his fish with any appetite. The rest concealed their daintiness by making much of savouring the olives and the bread, or filling up on cheese and fruit. They turned the perches’ bones and mottled skin to hide the flesh they could not eat.
It was not long, of course, before the meal was finished and the waitresses had cleared the dishes, leaving the old men, freed by champagne and liqueurs, to follow the informal agenda of the birthday lunch and reminisce. There’d be no gifts or speeches. That was Victor’s stated wish. His hearing was not good enough, despite his humming, temperamental hearing aid, for gifts and speeches. But stated wishes of that kind are only code for something else. No one demands the gift they want. Instead they say, ‘No need. No fuss. I’m happy just to see you here.’ So Victor’s friends had done their best to translate the old man’s code. What gift would please a frail and childless millionaire about to embark upon his ninth decade? Something you cannot buy, of course. They’d had grim fun, these five ageing traders, identifying all those things that can’t be bought and which were lost as men got old. Good health. Good looks. Teeth, hair, and waists. The pleasures of the bed. Patience. Energy. A fertile place in someone’s living heart. Control of wind and bladder. All these were gone and way beyond the sway of credit cards. What then for Victor’s birthday gift? A place in history? Esteem? These must be earned, not bought.
‘A statue, then!’ The suggestion had been meant in jest. A statue to the vanity of age. But the idea was better than the jest, and soon had the old traders nodding at its aptness. They’d place a statue with a plaque in the Soap Garden. They’d raise the funds through subscription. All the traders in the marketplace would want to give. A good idea. A public gift to the city to mark the old man’s birthday. They’d had some drawings done by the woman who had cast a bronze statue (for the entrance of the new concert hall) of the city senators who died on lances in 1323. They liked her work. These senators were men in pain. Those lances were as straight and cruel as Death’s own finger. The hands which sought to stem the wounds or pull out the lances by their shafts were hands like mine or yours, except a little larger and in bronze. This was no abstract metaphor. She was no artist of the modern school. She’d talked to them in terms they understood: payments, contracts, completion dates, the price of bronze. Despite his spoken wishes, then, there was a shortish speech, a gift. The five old men presented Victor with the artist’s drawings. ‘They’re just ideas,’ they said. ‘You choose. We’ll see your statue is in place before you’re eighty-one.’ Victor did not make a speech. He nodded, that is all, and put the portfolio of drawings on his desk.
‘I’ll find some time later for these,’ he said, and joined them at the table once again to add his monumental awkwardness to theirs.
They tried in vain to open up some windows and let some town air in. But all windows higher than the second floor were double-glazed and safety-sealed and only activated by a call to the building’s brain, the high-tech deck of chips and boards which regulated everything from heating to alarms. They tried to resurrect the country lunches that they had shared when they were younger, middle-aged, and vying for crops and produce at the smalltown auctioneers. They tried to sing along with all the sentimental tunes dished up for them by Band Accord. They tried to grow animated rather than just sleepy with the alcohol they’d drunk. But the office suite was deadening. The headaches and the rheumatism which had made such progress, nurtured by the formal tension of the lunch, deepened their discomfort and the furrows on their brows. Their coughs could no longer reach and clear the tickling dryness in their throats. Their eyes were smarting. Their faces were as red and vexed as coxcombs. Conditions there were perfect for a heart attack or stroke.
Victor sat as deadened as his guests, not by the onslaught of the offices — he was used to that — but by the discomfort that he felt in company. He’d never had the conversation or the animated face to make himself or the people round him feel at ease. He had no repartee, no party skills, no social affability. What kind of city man was he that did not relish the light and phatic talk, the spoken oxygen of markets, offices, and streets? He did not care. He did not need to care. A boss can speak as little as he wishes, and stay away from markets, offices, and streets. Truth to tell, he did not even relish the joshing and the drink-emboldened flattery that his guests — between their coughs and flushes — were exchanging at the table. He mistook their talk for trivia. He took their wheezing and their creaking and the damp heat on their foreheads as the wages of their sinful lives, their drinking, smoking, family lives, their lack of gravitas. He looked on them with less kindness, less forgiveness, less respect than he had looked upon the yellow aphids that he’d killed that day.
Victor’s own breathing — papery and shallow at the best of times — had become distressed by the cigarettes and the one pipe smoked with the brandy after lunch. His stomach too was just a little restless from the fish.
‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ he said, and stood, his brandy glass in hand. His guests stood, too, as promptly as they could, expecting toasts.
‘Fresh air,’ said Victor, his sentence shortened by a cough. ‘Let’s go to the roof.’
He led them in a halting, single file across the room to where his private lift waited for his summons. The three accordionists, instructed to ‘accompany’ proceedings until instructed otherwise, tagged on, their instruments strapped on their chests like oxygen machines. The waitress with the brandy — dutiful, uncertain — followed on. And last of all, the cats. They crowded in as best they could. The lift was meant for one. It shook a little on its hawsers as the old men and accordions wheezed in unison, and stumbled intimately against each other on the ascent to the 28th. But when they had emerged beneath the arch of fessandras into the air and foliage of the rooftop garden, the greengrocers breathed deeply, swallowed mouthfuls of the dirty but unfettered air, turned their faces to the sun and wind, and looked out across the city and the suburbs to the blue-green hills, the grey-green woods, beyond.
The Band Accord stood at the door, their mood transformed. The new note that they struck was sweet and sentimental. They played the sort of joyful harvest tunes that make you dance and weep, their grace notes jesting with the melody. The weaving cheerfulness of the accordion could make a teacup dance and weep. It is the only instrument strapped to the player’s heart. Its pleated bellows stretch and smile.