Our Kind of Traitor (28 page)

‘The tickets were a
present
, you see, Dima,’ she confides sweetly, touching his arm. ‘A good friend gave them to us, a dear old gentleman. For love. I don’t think he’d like us to leave our seats empty, would he? If he found out, he’d be heartbroken’ – which was the answer they’d cooked up with Luke and Ollie over a late nightcap of malt.

Dima stares from one to other of them in disappointment while he regroups his thoughts.

Restlessness in the ranks behind him: can’t we get this over?

The initiative is with the poor bugger in the field …

Solution!

‘Then hear me, Professor, OK? Hear me once’ – his finger jabbing into Perry’s chest – ‘OK,’ he repeats, nodding menacingly. ‘
After
the game. Hear me? Soon as the goddam game is over, you gonna come visit us in hospitality.’ He swings round to Gail, challenging her to upset his great plan. ‘Hear me, Gail? You gonna bring this Professor
to our hospitality. And you gonna drink champagne with us. The game don’t end when it ends. They gotta do goddam presentations out there, speeches, lotta shit. Federer gonna win easy. You wanna bet me five grand US he don’t win, Professor? I give you three to one. Four to one.’

Perry laughs. If he had a god, it would be Federer. No dice, Dima, sorry, he says. Not even at a hundred to one. But he isn’t out of the wood yet:

‘You’re gonna play me tennis tomorrow, Professor, hear me? A
rematch
’ – the finger still stabbing at Perry’s chest – ‘I gonna send someone round find you after the game, you gonna come visit us in hospitality, and we gonna fix a rematch, no pussying. And I’m gonna beat the shit outta you, buy you a massage after. You’re gonna need it, hear me?’

Perry has no time for further protestation. Out of the corner of her eye, Gail has observed the tour guide with the silvery hair and red brolly detach himself from the group and advance on Dima’s undefended back.

‘Aren’t you going to introduce us to your friends, Dima? You can’t keep a beautiful lady like this all to yourself, you know,’ a silken voice says reproachfully in pitch-perfect English with a faint Italian accent. ‘
Dell Oro
,’ he announces. ‘
Emilio
dell Oro. An old friend of Dima’s from way, way back. So pleased.’ And takes each of their hands, first Gail’s with a gallant downward tip of the head, then Perry’s without one, thereby reminding her of a ballroom Lothario called Percy who cut in on her best boyfriend when she was seventeen, and nearly raped her on the dance floor.

‘And I’m Perry Makepiece and she’s Gail Perkins,’ Perry says. And as a light-hearted footnote that really impresses her: ‘I’m not really a professor, so don’t be alarmed. It’s just Dima’s way of putting me off my tennis.’

‘Then welcome to Roland Garros Stadium, Gail Perkins and Perry Makepiece,’ dell Oro replies, with a radiant smile that she is beginning to suspect is permanent. ‘So glad we shall have the pleasure of seeing you after the historic match. If there
is
a match,’ he adds, with
a theatrical lift of the hands and a glance of reproach at the grey sky.

But the last word is Dima’s:

‘I gonna send someone get you, hear me, Professor? Don’t walk out on me. Tomorrow I beat the shit outta you. I love this guy, hear me?’ he cries to the supercilious Armani kids with their watery smiles gathered behind him, and having enfolded Perry for a last defiant hug, falls in beside them as they resume their amble.

12

Settling at Perry’s side in the twelfth row of the western stand of the Roland Garros Stadium, Gail stares incredulously at the band of Napoleon’s Garde Républicaine in their brass helmets, red cockades, skin-tight white breeches and thigh-length boots as they roll out their kettledrums and give their bugles a final blow before their conductor mounts his wooden rostrum, suspends his white-gloved hands above his head, spreads his fingers and flutters them like a dress designer. Perry is talking to her but has to repeat himself. She turns her head to him, then leans it on his shoulder to calm herself, because she’s trembling. And so in his own way is Perry, because she can hear the pulse of his body – boom boom.

‘Is this the Men’s Singles Finals or the Battle of Borodino?’ he shouts gaily, pointing at Napoleon’s troops. She makes him say it again, lets out a hoot of laughter and gives his hand a squeeze to bring them both down to earth.

‘It’s all right!’ she yells into his ear. ‘You did fine! You were a star! Super seats too! Well done!’

‘You too! Dima looked great.’

‘Great. But the children are already in Berne!’

‘What?’

‘Tamara and the little girls are already in Berne! Natasha too! I’d have thought they’d all be together!’

‘Me too.’

But his disappointment is of a lesser order than hers.

Napoleon’s band is very loud. Whole regiments could march to it and never return.

‘He’s very keen to play tennis with you again, poor man!’ Doolittle shouts.

‘I’ve noticed!’ Big nods and smiles from Milton.

‘Have you got time tomorrow?’

‘Absolutely not. Too many dates,’ Milton replies, with an adamant shake of his head.

‘That’s what I feared. Tricky.’

‘Very,’ Milton agrees.

Are they just being children, or has the fear of God crept into them? Carrying his hand to her lips, Gail kisses it then keeps it against her cheek because, quite unconsciously, he has moved her nearly to tears:

Of all the days in his life that he should be free to enjoy, and isn’t! To watch Federer in the Final of the French Open is for Perry like watching Nijinsky in
L’Après-midi d’un Faune
! How many Perry-lectures has she not happily listened to, curled up with him in front of the television set in Primrose Hill, on the subject of Federer, the perfected athlete Perry would love to be? – Federer as
formed man
, Federer the
runner as dancer
, shortening and lengthening his stride to tame the flying ball into providing him with the tiny, hanging extra split second that he needs to find the pace and angle – the steadiness of his upper body whether it’s moving backwards, forwards, sideways – his supernatural powers of anticipation that aren’t supernatural at all, Gail, but the summit of eye–body–brain coordination.

‘I really want you to enjoy today!’ she shouts into his ear like a final message. ‘Just put everything else out of your mind. I love you: I said I
love
you, idiot!’

*

She conducts an innocent survey of the spectators next to them. Whose are they? Dima’s? Dima’s enemies? Hector’s?
We’re going in barefoot
.

To her left, an iron-jawed blonde woman with a Swiss national cross on her paper hat and another on her ample blouse.

To her right, a middle-aged pessimist in a rainproof hat and cape, sheltering from the rain everybody else is pretending not to notice.

In the row behind them, a Frenchwoman leads her children in a lusty singing of ‘La Marseillaise’, perhaps under the mistaken impression that Federer is French.

With the same insouciance Gail scans the crowd on the open terraces opposite them.

‘See anyone special?’ Perry yells into her ear.

‘Not really. I thought
Barry
might be here.’

‘Barry?’

‘One of our silks!’

She is talking nonsense. There is a silk called Barry in her Chambers but he loathes tennis and loathes the French. She’s hungry. Not only did they leave their coffees behind in the Rodin Museum. They actually forgot lunch. The realization prompts memories of a Beryl Bainbridge novel in which the hostess of a difficult dinner party forgets where she has put the pudding. She shouts to Perry, needing to share the joke:

‘How long is it since you and I actually
lost the lunch
?’

But for once Perry doesn’t get the literary reference. He’s staring at a row of picture windows halfway up the stands on the other side of the court. White tablecloths and hovering waiters are discernible through the smoked glass, and he’s wondering which window belongs to Dima’s hospitality box. She feels the pressure of Dima’s arms round her again, and his crotch pressing against her thigh with childlike unawareness. Were the fumes of vodka last night’s, or this morning’s? She asks Perry.

‘He was just getting himself up to par,’ Perry replies.

‘What?’

‘Par!’

*

Napoleon’s troops have fled the battlefield. A prickly quiet descends. An overhead camera glides on cables across an ugly black sky.
Natasha
. Is she or isn’t she? Why hasn’t she answered my text? Does Tamara know? Is that why she’s whisked her back to Berne? No. Natasha takes her own decisions. Natasha is not Tamara’s child. And Tamara, God knows, is nobody’s idea of a mother. Text Natasha?

Just bumped into yr Dad. Watching Federer. RU pregnant? xox, Gail

Don’t.

The stadium is erupting. First Robin Soderling, then Roger Federer looking as becomingly modest and self-assured as only God can. Perry is craning forward, lips pressed tensely together. He’s in the presence.

Warm-up time. Federer mis-hits a couple of backhands; Soderling’s forehand returns are a little too waspish for a friendly exchange. Federer practises a couple of serves, alone. Soderling does the same, alone. Practice over. Their jackets fall off them like sheaths from swords. In the pale blue corner, Federer, with a flash of red inside his collar and a matching red tick on his headband. In the white corner, Soderling, with phosphorescent yellow flashes on his sleeves and shorts.

Perry’s gaze strays back to the smoked windows, so Gail’s does too. Is that a cream-coloured blazer she sees with a gold anchor on the pocket, floating in the brown mist behind the glass? If ever there was a man not to get into the back of a taxi with, it’s Signor Emilio dell Oro, she wants to tell Perry.

But quiet: the match has begun and to the joy of the crowd, but too suddenly for Gail, Federer has broken Soderling’s serve and won his own. Now it’s Soderling to serve again. A pretty blonde ballgirl with a ponytail hands him a ball, drops a bob, and canters off again. The linesman howls as if he’s been stung. The rain’s coming on again. Soderling has double-faulted; Federer’s triumphal march to victory has begun. Perry’s face is lit with simple awe and Gail discovers she is loving him all over again from scratch: his unaffected courage, his determination to do the right thing even if it’s wrong, his need to be loyal and his refusal to be sorry for himself. She’s his sister, friend, protector.

A similar feeling must have overtaken Perry, for he grasps her hand and keeps it. Soderling is going for the French Open. Federer is going for history, and Perry is going with him. Federer has won the first set 6–1. It took him just under half an hour.

*

The manners of the French crowd are truly beautiful, Gail decides. Federer is their hero as well as Perry’s. But they are meticulous in awarding praise to Soderling wherever praise is due. And Soderling is grateful, and shows it. He’s taking risks, which means he is also forcing errors and Federer has just committed one. To make up for it he delivers a lethal drop shot from ten feet behind the baseline.

When Perry watches great tennis, he enters a higher, purer register. After a couple of strokes he can tell you where a rally is heading and who’s controlling it. Gail isn’t like that. She’s a ground-shot girl: wallop and see what happens, is her motto. At the level she plays, it works a treat.

But suddenly Perry isn’t watching the game any more. He isn’t watching the smoked windows either. He has leaped to his feet and barged in front of her, apparently to shield her, and he’s yelling: ‘
What the hell!
’ with no hope of an answer.

Rising with him, which isn’t easy because now everyone is standing too and yelling ‘what the hell’ in French, Swiss German, English or whatever language comes naturally to them, her first expectation is that she is about to see a brace of dead pheasant at Roger Federer’s feet: a left and a right. This is because she confuses the clatter of everybody leaping up with the din of panicked birds clambering into the air like out-of-date aeroplanes, to be shot down by her brother and his rich friends. Her second equally wild thought is that it is Dima who has been shot, probably by Niki, and tossed out of the smoked-glass windows.

But the spindly man who has appeared like a ragged red bird at Federer’s end of the tennis court is not Dima, and he is anything but dead. He wears the red hat favoured by Madame Guillotine and long, blood-red socks. He has a blood-red robe draped over his shoulders and he’s standing chatting to Federer just behind the baseline that Federer has been serving from.

Federer is a bit perplexed about what to say – they clearly haven’t met before – but he preserves his on-court nice manners, although he looks a tad irritated in a grouchy, Swiss sort of way that reminds us that his celebrated armour has its chinks. After all, he’s here to
make history, not waste the time of day with a spindly man in a red dress who’s burst on to the court and introduced himself.

But whatever has passed between them is over, and the man in the red dress is scampering for the net, skirts and elbows flying. A bunch of tardy, black-suited gentlemen are in comic pursuit, and the crowd isn’t uttering a word any more: it’s a sporting crowd, and this is sport, if not of a high order. The man in the red dress vaults the net, but not cleanly: a bit of net-cord there. The dress is no longer a dress. It never was. It’s a flag. Two more black-suits have appeared on the other side of the net. The flag is the flag of Spain – L’Espagne – but that’s only according to the woman who sang ‘La Marseillaise’, and her opinion is contested by a hoarse-voiced man several rows up from her who insists it belongs to
le Club Football de Barcelona
.

A black-suit has finally brought the man with the flag down with a rugger tackle. Two more pounce on him and drag him into the darkness of a tunnel. Gail is staring into Perry’s face, which is paler than she has ever seen it before.