Randall had told her DeLorean didn’t really drink, but he drank then, deep, from the pint of Guinness that had materialised in his hand: to next year, and the year after that, and the year after that.
*
When the tumult finally subsided Liz pushed her way through to the bar to get a round in. A woman she had never seen before, a Lotus pin in the lapel of her — jumpsuit, did you call that? Flying suit? — was saying very loudly in an accent Liz could equally not put her finger on (England, west, possibly… or east), ‘We’re going to be millionaires!’
‘I’m happy for you,’ Liz said.
The woman smiled sloppily. ‘No, no, no.’ She was off her face. ‘We’re going to be millionaires.’ She made a lassoing gesture with her right hand, roping in the entire room. ‘You, me… all of us.’
Liz’s attention though had already wandered to another part of the bar, another hand — June, she thought the woman it belonged to was called — resting for an instant on a sleeve that she knew, almost without having to see his face, was Randall’s. She knew too what his fleeting touch in return signified. There was history there, graphic. She told herself it was no more than was to be expected. No one, man or woman, could go that long without. She couldn’t.
She blew out her cheeks and turned to the bar again. The barman was putting the last of her drinks on a tray. Liz took out her purse.
‘You only have to give me for three,’ the barman said. ‘Your Pernod’s paid for… The woman that was standing there.’
‘The millionaire.’
The barman showed her a piece of paper. ‘She gave me this.’
A cheque for fifty pence. ‘Told me she’d run out of coins for a tip.’
‘Here,’ said Liz and handed him an extra pound. ‘I’ll buy it off you.’
*
She was outside by a minute to ten. Robert arrived at two minutes past, which gave her three minutes to top up on smoke-free air.
‘I wasn’t expecting you to be out so soon.’ He sounded almost disappointed.
‘Ach, you know the way those things get.’
He gave her hand a squeeze.
She thought they might just be able to survive this. She squeezed back.
*
Randall had been on his way to talk to her, entirely on impulse, when June stepped in front of him, telling him, fingertips resting lightly on his wrist, that he was not to worry, she had no more desire to draw attention to the two of them than he had. ‘Let’s pretend we are talking about productivity…’
He was tempted to reply in the same vein, a little light innuendo to tide them both over, then carry swiftly on to where he wanted to be, but he stopped himself, as it dawned on him fully: that story she had told him, sitting in bed, hugging her knees, might turn out to be worth tens of millions of dollars. He slipped his hand under her wrist, felt her pulse quickening.
‘I don’t think you can possibly know how much I owe you, how much this whole company owes you,’ he said.
She withdrew her hand, a quick glance over both shoulders. It was so clearly not what she had been expecting to hear. ‘Thank you,’ she said, but whatever fire had been threatening to flare a minute before was, he could tell, well and truly doused. ‘If I don’t get talking to you before’ — a weak waist-high wave as she stepped away from the bar — ‘have a good Christmas.’
DeLorean had made his customary early exit a few minutes earlier, though with unaccustomed regret. (He had made pretty short work of the pint of Guinness Randall had handed him, and the pint that followed that.) He had a breakfast meeting in Dublin ahead of his flight home otherwise he would assuredly have stayed. He would take the Sounds of DeLoreland with him.
‘I think you could probably teach me things by now,’ he said.
Randall doubted it very much, but a compliment was like a favour, not to be refused.
‘I am very glad you think so.’
17
Randall’s own flight home, early the following week, had to divert to Pittsburgh: heavy snow in the New York metropolitan area. The first fat flakes were falling too in Pittsburgh as he walked to the terminal building. By the time he walked out the other side he could barely see two feet in front of him. There was a pause overnight then it started coming down in good and earnest.
And coming and coming and coming.
It was still snowing when he left again for Belfast eight days later, by which time perversely, given his problems on the way in, flying was pretty much the only guaranteed way of getting about. Out on the roads nothing much was moving. Out in the car lots even less was selling. And as for innovative gull-wing sports cars… Randall tried his best not to think about it and further spoil an already fraught Christmas. (‘Mommy says there’s no point you even trying to get across here,’ Tamsin told him the one time he got to talk to her. ‘She says we’re better not leaving the house.’)
It was actually something of a comfort to see, as the plane made its descent through clouds on the final leg of his return journey, the habitual rain-murk enveloping Belfast.
The relief lasted all of ninety-six hours. Then DeLorean called. The mood change, Randall thought afterwards, was palpable before the first word was out.
‘We are going to have to put the factory on short time,’ he said.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Prior rang. Thatcher ruled against the loan.’
‘But that was just to… I mean, I can appreciate there haven’t been many sales this past while…’
‘Let me see, in the last week of December? Twenty-five.’
‘…but what about contingency… the whole factory on short time?’
‘I hope after all this time you are not going to start telling me how to run my business, Edmund. I know my margins in ordinarily exceptional circumstances. These are extraordinarily exceptional.’
‘That’s a new distinction on me.’
‘And don’t be so asinine as to correct me on my English either. You know damn well what I mean. They are calling this the worst snowfall in a hundred years. You don’t legislate for once-in-a-century events, you roll with them as best you can. Ford has shut down its plant altogether. The snow will melt and the sales will pick up and the factory will return to full production and in the meantime maybe Her Majesty’s government will realise what’s at stake here.’
Randall’s head jerked round towards the window.
‘I don’t believe it,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘It’s started snowing here too.’
‘I’m glad you find it amusing.’
‘Amusing? Of course I don’t. I just…’
But the phone was already down at the other end of the line and Randall had not the energy or the desire at that moment to try to re-establish contact.