So there they stayed, at table, in public safety. He was, he said, excited by the prospect of spending a few months in town. His junior partners were good at seeing ideas through, but not so good at nurturing the building itself. He was the old-fashioned sort of architect, he said. He liked to have a love affair with everything he built. He let this slogan do its work, and then he threw it out before it did him harm in Anna’s eyes: ‘Excuse an old man his absurdities. I promise I’ll be less extravagant at the press conference. No gibberish, I think, for journalists.’
‘Ah, yes, the conference,’ said Anna. ‘Victor will need another set of plans … before the conference.’
‘Of course, my dear.’ (He had not used her name or even asked her what it was.) ‘I’ll send them over to him by courier.’
‘I’ll take them now, if it’ll help. That’ll please Victor. I’ll feel I’ve earned this splendid meal.’
‘They weigh at least ten kilos.’
‘I’m stronger than you think.’
Signor Busi was not keen to go with her to his room, or, indeed, to do the round trip all alone. It was too far. He was too tired and full. He called a bell boy to the table. He handed him his key. ‘Be so good as to go up to my room and fetch a yellow file. It’s this thick and so high.’ He mimed the file. ‘You’ll find three of them leaning up against the window bay. Just bring me one.’ He gave the boy a hundred note, and then embarked upon an anecdote about a client’s file that he’d once lost in New York, in a cab. The telling of it tired him. He lost the thread, and was relieved when the boy came back with the yellow file. He could not fight a yawn.
‘I’ll let you get to bed,’ Anna said.
Signor Busi stood and slowly straightened. His stomach squalled. He took her hand. ‘Good night, my dear,’ he said. ‘It has been a great pleasure.’ He watched her leaving for the line of taxis in the street, the bell boy and the file of papers at her side. She walked triumphantly.
She really is the most enticing woman, Signor Busi thought as he began the journey to his room.
Rook was now sitting up in bed. ‘How did it go?’ he asked again. Anna pointed to the bedroom door. A yellow file, fat with plans and papers, leant against the frame.
‘Have faith in me,’ she said. Why should she tell him any more. Let him imagine what he wished. Rook did not betray his lack of faith in her. His conscience was not clear but smudged with two grey marks where he had placed his knees.
They sat in silence for a while, Anna at the mirror, Rook in bed, each with secrets to preserve, but only one of them felt sure enough to smile.
6
ROOK SMILED AT CON. ‘Let’s talk,’ he said.
‘What for?’
‘Because, unless we talk, your market stall will fall to bits.’ His arms were up and stretched. ‘All this will disappear.’
‘Get lost.’ Con smiled at Rook, but his smile was lipless. It did not crease his eyes or pack his cheeks. It was tight. It elevated ‘Get lost’ from curt indifference to chilling malediction. The smile dismissed Rook as a man not worthy of contempt. But Rook was not dismissed. He put his hand out to stop Con packing for the night. He had counted on Con’s hostility. He’d hoped for it. It would not do if Con was a conciliator who preferred What’s done is done to the bald Get lost. Rook rubbed a finger and a thumb to mime the crumbling of a solid into dust.
‘Get lost,’ said Con. ‘I’ve work to do.’
‘But not for long,’ said Rook. ‘You’ll soon be out of work and rattling round the streets like me. Except you won’t have the savings I’ve got to make your unemployment pleasant.’
‘You’re farting through your mouth,’ said Con, but he was enticed enough to stop his efforts with his stall and turn to look Rook in the face.
Rook had prepared his speech. ‘Pay attention,’ he said, as if the trader were a six-year-old. ‘Don’t be a fool. We’ve more in common than you think … and I’m not blaming you.’
‘Not blaming me? For what?’
‘For that stupid scuffle with the country boy, and all your poke and squeak with Victor. For losing me my job. What do you think?’
‘You can blame yourself for that,’ said Con. He’d not bother to deny that he’d launched Joseph on the fumbled attempt to repossess his pitch payment. Why should he? It was reclamation, just and fair. He did not understand what ‘all your poke and squeak with Victor’ might be or why he should be blamed for Rook’s dismissal. Nor did he care. Rook was despicable, he thought, but as harmless as a snake that having lost its venom makes do with hiss. It did not matter what Rook knew about that farce with Joseph in the walkers’ tunnel. How could Rook damage Con now that he was, by all accounts, truncated from his boss for good?
‘You had it coming, and you got off lightly,’ he said. ‘I should have sent four boys, not one. You’d be on crutches now. Why should I feel guilty? I’m only sorry I wasn’t there myself.’
‘Don’t play the hero,’ said Rook. ‘If I was holding grudges I wouldn’t be here at all. I’d fix you privately. I’m here to help you out. Not that you deserve my help.’
‘Get lost.’
Rook wrapped his fingers round his keys. How he despised this man, his smell, his clothes, his tight and unforgiving face. But Rook had to persevere. His only route was Con. He put the yellow file of duplicate designs from the Busi Partnership on the trader’s stall, amongst the bruised fruit and the waste that Con would jettison. He took the top drawing out. There were the melting glass meringues, the starfish corridors, the indoor trees, the relocated cobblestones in wash and watercolour. There was the legend: ‘ARCADIA — a sketch’.
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s what dear Victor has in mind for you.’
Now Rook was free to make his speech. He told how Victor was not satisfied with profits from the marketplace, how he’d been prompted by his bankers and his strategists to build, how Signor Busi and Arcadia had won the old man’s ear — and eye. An easy task because Victor was demented with old age, indigestion, and his obsession with a statue of some kind: ‘A mother and a child, would you believe. And not a statue of himself!’
Rook made the most of his regrets that he was no longer in Victor’s pay. It was his view, he explained with patient irony, that since the one man who knew the Soap Market ‘from the inside out’ had been removed from Victor’s side, then Victor had been free to run amuck.
‘I protected you,’ he said. ‘Maybe you didn’t like to pay for that, but I protected you — and see what’s happened now that the Soap Market has got no one to speak for it inside Big Vic.’ He punched the drawings. ‘There’s a press conference in three days’ time,’ he said. ‘They think they’ve got the only set of plans. But your man Rook has earnt his pay and got a second set.’ Rook recalled for Con the chilling boasts of Busi, ‘There’s nothing to preserve’, ‘We level off and take away’, ‘We start from scratch’.