Sing Like You Know the Words (26 page)

The newspapers treated David as
if he was a new kind of hero, stepping in to save the factory from
certain closure. Afterwards there were regular articles and
photographs continuing to show the local benefactor in a positive
light.

However, at first things did not
seem to go well with the business, and David’s friends feared that
it had all been a disastrous mistake. Week by week it was a case of
finding the money to pay wages and keep the plant open somehow, not
knowing whether that week would be the last, or how long the banks
would remain patient.

Before long David himself
appeared to have been physically reduced by the stress, worried
looking, almost hesitant. He lost weight. He even looked shorter
than before, if that were possible. And still the new orders did
not come in quickly enough. Just when he most needed the bright
aura of invulnerability that had always surrounded him, it seemed
to be fading away.

He began to spend more and more
time away from home; chasing business, living in hotels, eating and
drinking too much. He looked swollen but still he lost weight. In
private, his eyes looked haunted, though in public a receptive
audience or any kind of social gathering in which he could shine
would see him temporarily restored to his former self.

There was a change in Patricia
too. She was alone in the big house so much. Her own legal career
had become successful, but it seemed that this was no longer
enough. She was lonely. She explained to Matthew that often, now,
David was absent even if he happened to be at home. His thoughts
were not with her.

And she started to drink more:
not so that she became an embarrassing drunk, but so that a bottle
of wine in a day stopped making her sick and started to feel
normal. The wine didn’t coarsen her behaviour, but it made her
conversation more forthright. She started to tell people just what
she thought about things. It was not always comfortable to
hear.

-I never liked you that much
Matthew, she confided, and I suppose you knew it and have probably
never thought too much of me either. Ironic, don’t you think? That
it seems that you and I are now stuck with each other. While he is
away doing…what he does, all across the world, here we are like the
old married couple.

In fact Matthew was surprised to
hear that Patricia noticed him sufficiently to find him irritating.
He was so used to ignoring who people were, as opposed to what they
said and thought, that he imagined himself similarly invisible to
others. It was true that he was spending more time at the house,
and that he and Patricia were alone together more often, now that
David was so much on the road. At first Matthew had seen his visits
as a kind of duty, but now he began to question his motivation.

Naturally it was Patricia who
took charge. They were in the kitchen at the time, each holding a
large and delicate thin stemmed glass in which a splash of clear
white wine glittered. Matthew remembered it as the second or third
bottle. The kitchen was the very opposite of the snug: all natural
wood, expensive tiles, discreet and exquisite ceramic designs and
functional polished steel. It was Patricia’s own space as much as
the snug was David’s

Matthew was sitting at the
breakfast bar on a stool that was much too fashionable to be
comfortable. Patricia was standing, perhaps a little too close to
him. He didn´t remember what they were speaking about, but he
remembered that Patricia stopped talking, but her glass down on the
bar, and leaned in, gently taking his own glass. With her free hand
she lightly brushed his cheek, and something about that gesture
felt electric.

-You know there´s no way you can
drive home tonight Matt, you’ve had far too much to drink, she
said.

She pulled him towards her,
stronger than he expected and kissed him fully on the mouth.
Matthew managed not to fall off the stool. Then he was standing
awkwardly, not resisting her embrace.

-Hold me properly. I´m not going
to sleep on my own again tonight. Shit, Matthew, I can´t do it. I
can´t be alone like this. I´m going to have to sin it seems. Better
with an old friend than with a stranger, don´t you think?

She took him to her bed that
night and a few more times in the weeks that followed. Afterwards,
she talked to him about David.

They both knew that it was not
to be the grand passion of their lives, and in Patricia´s case the
sex was more like first aid for some wounded part of herself than
love. Matthew felt more relief than loss when Patricia told him
that their cursory affair was over.

-I’m sending you back to your
wounded brunettes and washed out blondes, was how she put it.

She said she felt sorry for
those girls.

-I know how your mind works.
Part of you is already planning how you are going to get rid of
them before you have even get to know the poor deluded things.

It seemed that the price of
intimacy was that Patricia could be more brutally frank with him
than before. Matthew denied that it was so, but the words stung.
Sometimes Patricia spoke as if she did not recognize the line
between the honesty of friends and spitefulness.

Matthew did not notice any
change in the relationship between Patricia and her husband, but
between himself and Patricia, some new and lasting bond that was
not that of lovers had been created. It was not tender, and in fact
Patricia showed no greater sign of liking him than before, but now
she felt that she could talk to him about anything. There were
things she told him that he was sure she would not discuss with
David, though in the end her private concerns mostly had to do with
David. At times, Matthew felt as if he had been recruited as a
counsellor, not a lover.

And Matthew was surprised at his
own attitude to having broken David’s trust. His first feeling was
some mild guilt, mixed with a perverse joy that he realized was a
sense of being revenged. He had no idea why he should want to seek
revenge on David. He had to ask himself once more whether he had
always secretly resented David´s success, and his own failure. But
with the passage of time, he came to feel as if nothing important
had changed.

And on the outside at least,
nothing had changed. Their lives carried on as before and Matthew,
if he thought about it at all, reasoned that the times with
Patricia had just been a release for both of them. It was a
footnote in the story of their lives and no more. David was still
away a lot, but Matthew was careful never to ask Patricia whether
she found anyone else to ease her loneliness. That was the only
question he could not ask.

He usually met her at lunchtimes
now. It was easy since they both worked in the city. Most times
they went to the same restaurant. They even ordered the same
dishes, like the old couple they had, in some ways, become. And
once, long after the familiar pattern of their relationship had
been re-established, she said something unexpected to him there as
they were waiting for the bill.

-I do love my husband you
know.

-Why should I doubt it?

-He’s not very…attentive.

-He is very busy, always.

-But you shouldn’t be critical
of him for that, Patricia insisted, as if Matthew had ever
criticised David in her hearing. It’s not just about the business
you know, it’s more than that. It’s more even than the people
depending on him.

-What else could there be?

-Something more, something
indefinable. He knows that he is meant to do something important.
He´s not quite down here on this earth like the rest of us.

Matthew could only sigh. There
it was again, imagined fate, haunting them all. It seemed that
David had persuaded at least one other person of the sense of
destiny that drove him on. For Matthew, the obsession was only a
conceit of the ego; but it was no less fascinating, and appalling,
to watch this small idea shaping the lives of his friends, maybe
even of his own life.

***

David might have left the law
firm, but Albert remained a constant presence in the gatherings at
the Thomas household. Perhaps he had once been David´s client, but
it was evident that their hidden relationship went deeper than
that. Matthew did not understand why Albert hung around, but he
could have said the same about himself.

His own relationship with Albert
had changed. Albert was the same as always: pompous, entertaining,
pedantic and not entirely serious in the outrageous statements he
came out with. But now Matthew started to find these same
characteristics tiresome and irritating, rather than amusing. The
polite intellectual sparring that Matthew had previously enjoyed
could provoke him to real anger now.

Some part of him knew that it
was all about David really. There was a spark of sentimentality in
Matthew that was outraged at David making money from owning a
business that had a military connection; however far removed it
might be from actually making weapons. That David should be a
businessman at all was offensive to Matthew in a way that he did
not entirely understand, but in any case it was impossible that he
should express these vague feelings to David directly. It was not
logical, but he found that the anger he reserved for his friend and
could not express was transferred to David´s more or less permanent
guest.

Albert chose not to notice any
change between himself and Matthew. He remained his charming urbane
self, but everyone else could feel the tension growing between
them. It was a problem for Patricia: a little aggression added to
the social evenings prevented the atmosphere becoming fatuous, but
nobody wanted to witness a scene. On the other hand she and David
could hardly withdraw the standing invites of two of their closest
friends. Privately she told Matthew to stop making an ass of
himself and to leave Albert alone if he couldn´t get on with him.
Matthew said he would try, but he had become a moth to the flame;
unable to ignore whatever it was about Albert that had started to
annoy him.

Then in the snug one night they
got talking about Africa. You got the impression Albert had spent
some time there, the way he talked. Of course his family had moved
from Uganda. But the truth was that Albert talked about everything
as if he knew all there was to know about it.

Matthew was a little drunk, but
not more so than usual. Patricia was trying to make some point. It
was the famine, in Ethiopia of course, and the Band Aid project and
all the hopeful beginnings that seemed to grow out from that. She
said she´d always thought that charities were useless, but maybe
these events showed that ordinary people could make a difference:
maybe she needed to change her mind

-It was the film of the children
that made the difference for all of us, she said. Most people are
decent. Once they are confronted by the horrible reality of
suffering they demand a change.

-I´m not sure, Matthew replied.
I thought that about the Falklands war. It would be like in
Vietnam: once people saw the reality the public support would
disappear. But it was the opposite – the public couldn´t get
enough. Our masters had learned how to manage the news I suppose,
so our wars now can be entertainments.

-You can´t make a starving child
entertaining Matt, Patricia sounded slightly shocked at the
suggestion.

-No, but famine is nothing new.
And we become accustomed to things so quickly. The coverage needs
to be more explicit every time in order to shock us. I´m not sure
that it´s healthy or where it ends. Shock is an instant emotion and
then it´s gone. And I don´t know how much you can build on
emotion.

-You can´t build anything
without it Matt, Patricia insisted.

Albert was being unusually
quiet.

In his mind, he was back in the
horn of Africa. Sitting for days in that hotel, waiting for the
Colonel to decide. Everyone was there; the whole gang from all the
countries of the north. All of them with expensive toys to offer to
the new emperor. The bastard had spent as much in that month,
celebrating a decade of his revolution, as it would have cost to
feed the people in the dry zone for ten years.

The hotel was not so bad. The
obligatory five stars. The usual problems with air conditioning,
food and bedding of course. Otherwise the place was fine. The
plumbing carried the waste somewhere off site and beyond that you
didn´t enquire. The pool had been dry, but none of them felt much
like swimming. There was ice in the bar, if you were prepared to
risk whatever organisms might be frozen in it, and they said that
the water was good. Even the climate was pleasant once you got used
to the slightly thin air. You could loiter in the avenues lined
with eucalyptus trees and come across almost nothing to suggest
that the Colonel had spent most of the last ten years murdering his
opponents and waging war on sections of his own people.

No one was supposed to leave the
hotel without their official guide, but everyone did. It wasn´t so
much that they were curious as that they were bored. It was easy
enough to take a cab and sometimes the weyela would talk to you as
his colleague drove you to your random destination.

It was just the beginning then,
and he supposed that things got worse later, but in the capital you
would not have known there was famine threatening the country. Even
the officials seemed to have chosen not to believe in it. In the
street you heard stories soon enough, if you kept your ears open,
but it was difficult to know how much to believe. The Colonel felt
obliged to give the media, at least the African media, some sort of
access. He was head of the organization for African unity, after
all. What you heard from those guys was bad enough and they were
sure they had not seen the worst of it.