We live in an infinity of infinities, and we reshape our lives with every passing thought and each unconscious action, threading an ever-changing course through the myriad possibilities of existence. I lie here and ponder the events and decisions that led me to this point, the precise sequence of thoughts and actions that ended – for now – with me having nothing more constructive or urgent to do than think about those very eventualities. I’ve never had so much time to think. The bed, the room, the clinic, its setting: all are highly conducive to thinking. They impose a sense of calmness, of things remaining unchanged and yet being reliably maintained, without decay or obvious entropy. I am free to think, not abandoned to rot.
In Detroit I played pinball, in Yokohama pachinko, in Tashkent bagatelle. I found all three games enthralling, fascinated by the randomness that emerged from such highly structured, precisely set-up machinery knocking shining spheres of steel from place to place within a setting where, in the end, gravity always won. The comparison with our own lives is almost too obvious, yet still it gives us an inkling into our fates and what drives us to them. It is only an inkling, because we are submerged within a vastly more complicated environment than the clicking, bouncing steel balls and the pins and bands and buffers and walls they collide with – our course is more like that of a particle within a smoke chamber, subject to Brownian motion, and we are at least nominally possessed of free will – but by reducing, simplifying, it allows us a grasp of something otherwise too great for us to comprehend in the raw.
I was a traveller, a fixer for the Concern. That is what I was, what I made myself into, what I was groomed for and made into by others, what life made me. Across the many worlds I roamed, surfing that blast-front of ever-changing, ever-branching existence, dancing through the spectra of plausible/implausible, hermetic/connected, banal/bizarre, kind/cruel and so on; all the ways that we’d worked out a world or deck of worlds could be judged, evaluated and ranked. (This world, here, is plausible, hermetic, banal, kind. Yours is the same except closer to the cruel end of the relevant spectrum. Quite a lot closer. You had the misfortune to have a singular ancestral Eve and I guess she just wasn’t a very nice person. Blame volcanoes or something.)
Of course, I cannot tell anybody here this, though I have thought to. I could talk to them in my own first language, or even English or French, which were my adopted tongues and operational languages and the chances are high that nobody here would understand a solitary word I said, but that would be foolish. It would be an indulgence, and I am not sure that I can afford even so modest a one. I have even been reluctant to think about my past life until this point, which is now starting to seem almost a superstition.
At some point I suppose I will have to.
I wish the little bird would come back.
I suppose Mr Noyce was a sort of father figure to me. He was a decent bloke, what can I say? Old money, which made him unusual among the City people I knew at the time. Come to think of it, so did the being-decent bit, too.
I’d supplied his son Barney with enough dust to sink a cruiser, though I’m not sure Mr N ever knew this. I mean, he certainly knew Barney did toot by the sackful, or he must have guessed, because he was sharp, nobody’s fool, that’s for sure, but I don’t think Barney ever told him he’d got so much of it through me. Getting introduced properly to Barney’s dad was one of the favours I called in when I decided to make the transition to relative respectability. Barney owed me money and instead of taking it in folding I suggested that he might like to invite me to the Noyce family pile for a weekend in the country. I’d thought Barney might resist this idea but he jumped at it. Made me think I’d priced the deal far too low, but there you are.
“Sure, sure, there’s a bunch of people coming down next weekend. Come down then. Yeah, why not.”
We were glugging Bolly in a newly opened champagne bar in Limehouse, all glitzy chrome and distressed leather, both of us coked to the eyeballs, jittery and voluble. Much drumming of fingers and over-quick nodding and all that sort of shit. I’d taken a lot less than he had but I’ve always had this thing where I start behaving like the people I’m with even though I’m technically not in the same state they are. I’ve been a designated driver once or twice and drunk nothing stronger than fizzy mineral water all night – with no drugs at all – and people have taken one look at me and tried to take the car keys off me because I’m slurring my words and have gone all giggly and smiley.
Same with the white stuff. I would take a little with clients just to be chummy while they got stuck in up to their eyebrows but I’d end up just as high and wired and frenetic as them. Thing is, I can always snap out of it pronto, know what I mean? I’d be sober the instant after somebody accused me of slipping vodkas into my Perrier, which, once they’d realised I was straight, meant they were happy to let me drive, but that came with its own problems cos you look like an actor, like you’re taking the piss, just pretending to be drunk, know what I mean? People resent that. Especially drunks, of course. Caused a few arguments. I never was taking the piss, though. It wasn’t something I did deliberately, it was just something that happened. Anyway, I learned to tone down this getting drunk/whatever on the atmosphere effect, but it still came into play.
“What sort of people?” I asked, suspicious.
“I don’t know,” Barney said, looking round. He smiled at a table with three girls. There was a fair amount of talent in the place. Barney was tall and blond to my average and dark. He worked out, but there was a sort of pudginess to his face that made you think he’d be a bloater if he ever stopped gyming every day. Or gave up toot. I’ve been called wiry. “Just people.” He frowned at me, trying to smile at the same time. He waved one arm. “People. You know; people.”
“Sorry, mate,” I said, “I don’t fink I can cope with this level of detail. Can you be a bit more vague?” I was doing the barrow-boy bit then, which was why I said “fink.”
Barney struggled. “Just, I don’t know…”
“Tramps? Kings?” I suggested, annoyed that we still weren’t getting anywhere.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Barney said. “People. I can’t say. People like me, people like you. Well, maybe not like you, but people.” He sounded frustrated and glanced at the door to the Gents. It was only about fifteen minutes since his last toot but I sensed he was getting ready for more.
“People,” I said.
“People,” Barney agreed. He patted the pocket where his wrap of gear was and nodded emphatically.
Barney never was very good on specifics. It was one of the things that made him not very good as a trader. That and the over-fondness for the coke.
“This weekend?” I asked.
“This weekend.”
“Sure there’ll be room?”
He snorted. “Course there’ll be fucking room.”
There was lots of room cos it was a fucking mansion, wasn’t it? Spetley Hall’s in Suffolk, near Bury St Edmunds. One of those places where you pass a nice but deserted-looking gatehouse like something out of a fairy story and start off down the drive and begin to wonder if it’s all a giant wind-up cos the gentle rolling parkland and distant vistas of follies and herds of deer just seem to go on for ever with no actual dwelling in sight.
Then this cliff of stonework dotted with statues and urns and tall windows with ornate surrounds and looking like a barely miniaturised version of Buckingham Palace heaves into view over the horizon and you suspect you’re finally nearing the gaff. Still didn’t get greeted by no butler or footmen or anything, though. Had to park me own car, didn’t I? Though actually there was a servant of some description who did help me with my bags once I’d tramped up the steps to the front doors. He even apologised for not being there to greet me, just taken some other guests to their room.