The Spanish Game (7 page)

13

Ben knew that it was not a good idea for a man of thirty-two to walkout of a crowded London pub after telling his older brother to fuckoff. Not in Kensington and Chelsea, at any rate. And not in front of half a dozen of his wife’s colleagues, most of whom would now be on their mobile phones telling anyone from the
Standard
not fortunate enough to have been there in person just exactly what happened in the lounge bar of the Scarsdale at 8.28 p.m.

Mark had followed him outside, and Ben had heard Alice calling his name as he turned on to Kensington High Street, but they had both decided to let him go and were probably still waiting backin the pub. There was no sense, after all, in going after Ben when the red mist descended. They both would have known that from long experience.

He walked in the direction of Hyde Park, turning backon himself at the gates to Kensington Palace and returning along the opposite side of the street. Alice tried calling him on his mobile phone but he switched it off. It took about ten minutes for Ben to calm down and another five for embarrassment to set in. So much of his anger, he knew, was just a pose, a melodramatized statement of his long-term refusal to change. Whatever arrangement, whatever trap had been set by Alice and Mark, angered him only because he had been kept out of the loop, treated like a child by his wife and brother, and finally cornered in a place from which there was no realistic escape. It had occurred to him many times that he was clinging to old ideas simply because they shielded him from facing harder choices; in a very dangerous sense, Ben was defined by an attitude towards his father which he had formed as a teenager. To abandon that principled stand would mean the dismantling of an entire way of thinking. How would people react to him? How would he square it with what had happened to Mum? Ben wished to honour her memory, and yet that was the easy position. Far more difficult, surely, to do what Mark had done, to let bygones be bygones and to open himself up to chance.

He was heading backto the pub via a street at the western end of Edwardes Square when he heard a voice behind him.

‘Ben?’

He turned and saw that Mark was following him. He looked shattered. With the club opening in Moscow, he was probably only sleeping five hours a night and this was the last thing he needed.

‘Look, I’m sorry. It’s my fault. Don’t blame Alice. I asked her to help me out and she was just being loyal.’

Ben said nothing.

‘I’m sorry if I tookyou by surprise. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. We just…’ Mark stalled on the words. He had obviously rehearsed something and was determined to get it right. ‘All I was trying to say was this. More and more I’ve been thinking about the future, you know? Where are we gonna be ten years down the line? You and Alice have kids, Dad’s their grandfather, but because of all this shit that’s thirty years in the past his name can’t be mentioned at the dinner table. Mean while he and I are getting on better than ever, but we’re still having to creep around behind your back. How long’s it gonna last?’

‘So you want me to meet him just so that you can have a better time of it when you’re fifty-five?’

Ben regretted saying that, but for the sake of fraternal pride did not want to concede too early.

‘I’m just saying that you should think about giving him a chance. Not tonight. Tonight is fucked into a hat. But soon, Ben, soon. Otherwise he’s just going to be this barrier between us, a bridge we can’t cross.’

Ben smirked and looked up at the night sky.

‘I knew this was going to happen,’ he said. ‘Something like tonight.’

‘It was inevitable,’ Mark said.

‘Yes it was. And you know why? Because he’s talked you into it. You’re too soft on him, brother. You always want to do what’s right so that no one gets upset. Well,
I’m
upset. I got
very
upset in there. I embarrassed myself, I embarrassed you and I embarrassed my wife in front of everybody she works for. How does
that
feel?’

Mark did not respond. It looked as if he wanted to, but was holding backfor fear of making things worse.

‘You want my truthful opinion?’ Ben was not surprised to feel that there was still resentment inside him. Most of it was a desire not to lose face, and he knew that he was prepared to make a later concession. ‘I thinkthe relationship Dad has with you gives him what he wants - an opportunity to absolve himself of guilt.’ From his jacket pocket he took out a packet of cigarettes and watched his brother’s face for a register of annoyance. ‘Now he wants to complete that process, supposedly to convince me of his worth as a father. But that’s not motivated by a genuine concern for my welfare, or Alice’s, or anyone else. It’s just a selfish desire to convince himself of his blamelessness in respect of the past. He’s a
spy
, for Christ’s sake. All his relationships are games, little intrigues and power struggles. Lookhow he’s manipulated you. For most of his adult life Christopher Keen has been making a living out of an ability to convince people that he is something other than the person he appears to be.
Think
about it, Mark. If he could do it to Mum when they were married, if he could to it to us when we were kids, what’s to stop him doing it now?’

‘Thanks,’ Mark said, his face tightening. ‘You think I’m that much of a mug?’

Ben didn’t answer. He started walking towards the metal fence that ran along the western edge of the square. He had to move between parked cars.

‘You’ve got him all wrong,’ Mark said, following behind. ‘He’s not some puppet-master pulling the strings. Don’t you think people change? Don’t you thinkit’s possible that he might want to say sorry?’

Ben stopped and turned.

‘Has he said sorry to you?’

Mark could not give the answer he needed to without lying.

‘That’s not his style,’ he said, fudging it. They were now standing together on the pavement. ‘Dad just wants to make his peace. It’s that simple.’

‘Well, maybe he does,’ Ben conceded. ‘Maybe he does. And he can make it somewhere else.’

There were lights on in several of the houses on Edwardes Square, oil paintings and chintz and Peter Sissons reading the news. Ben saw a man enter a yellow-wallpapered drawing room wearing bottle-green corduroy trousers and a bright red sweater. The man was carrying a tray of food and talking to someone in another room.

‘You don’t believe that,’ Mark said.

‘Don’t I?’ Ben stared hard into his eyes. ‘He’s doing what I always thought he’d do. Crawling back, mid-life crisis, wanting us both to pat him on the head and tell him everything’s OK. Well, it’s not OK. He doesn’t meet me, he doesn’t meet Alice. End of story.’

‘Is that how
she
feels?’

‘Why don’t you askher?’ Ben turned again. ‘You two seem to be very close.’

‘I don’t need to askher.’ Mark was angry now. He couldn’t keep it in. ‘She knows what I know. She knows what you
should
know if you weren’t so fucking pig-headed. She knows that you’re
fascinated
by Dad. She knows that you can’t
wait
to meet him.’

Until that moment, Ben had thought that he was in control, bending Mark to his will. But this last remark caught him off guard. He ran through every one of his recent conversations with Alice, every argument, every lie, every quiet chat in the house, but he could not recall even hinting at what Mark had just suggested.

‘Is that what she told you?’ he asked.

‘She doesn’t need to tell me.’

Ben frowned.

‘Look,’ Mark said. ‘Don’t you even want to know what he looks like? How his character is different from yours? Don’t you want to know if he’s boring or vain or funny or rich? Doesn’t any of that interest you? Don’t you wonder what sort of a person he is, the hidden man?’

‘We have nothing in common,’ Ben said, but the statement lacked conviction. He blew a column of smoke at the railings. ‘Anyway, I’m not interested in any of that at all.’

But Mark was on to him.

‘I don’t buy it. You have nothing
but
interest in that. Listen, if you turn around now and agree to meet him, Alice is not going to think badly of you. Your friends won’t thinkyou’ve sold out.
I
won’t think you’ve sold out.’ Mark touched his chest. ‘Is that all that’s stopping you? What other people might think?’

Ben was stunned by how well they both knew him. He thought that he had concealed his feelings, maintained a privacy, but his thoughts had been preempted. It was as if he was listening to his entire personality being pulled inside-out. He managed to say ‘No’, but the word was meaningless. Mark was whispering.

‘And it’s not disloyal to Mum. I know that’s always been on your conscience, but she wanted us to be happy.’

‘Does Alice think I’m stubborn?’ It was a question to which Ben already knew the answer. Somebody walked past them, but he did not look up. ‘Does Alice think I’m too proud to face facts, that I’m stuckin the past?’

‘No.’

‘And what about you?’

‘Ben, it doesn’t
matter
what I think. It doesn’t matter what
anyone
thinks. If you feel the way you feel, then it sounds like we’re all wasting our time. It sounds like there’s nothing more to be said.’

Ben waited. He was ready now. It was the right moment. He knew that Mark was being shrewd and not forcing the issue.

‘Nobody should make you do something that you don’t want to do,’ he said. ‘At the end of the day, just because I’ve started seeing Dad doesn’t mean that you should too.’

‘I know that…’

‘But I thinkit would do you good to meet him. I think it’s something that you need to do. Even if it’s just to let off steam, to have it out with him. That’s why we set this thing up tonight, this disastrous fucking drinkin this disastrous fucking boozer.’ Mark nodded his head in the direction of the pub. ‘But to know that he’s here in London and not do anything about that is just going to eat away at you. It’s bad for you, it’s bad for me and it’s bad for your marriage.’

And, finally, he had said enough. For a moment Ben allowed the silence of the square to envelop them, then he extinguished his cigarette on the black painted spike of a gate.

‘I’m right, you know,’ Mark said.

‘I know you are.’

‘So you’ll do it?’

Ben stared, taking his time.

‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.

14

There was something almost mundane about the hour that preceded their reunion. Ben simply showered, put on a clean shirt and a suit, placed a tie in one of the pockets of his jacket and drank a single gulp of vodka from a bottle of Stolichnaya he kept in the fridge. The spirit burned in his throat, spreading like linctus across his chest. Then he walked outside on to Elgin Crescent and began looking around for a cab.

It was a quarter to eight on a Thursday night. Alice was still at work, Mark already back in Moscow having acted as the intermediary in setting up the reunion. Ben found a taxi on Ladbroke Grove and settled into the backseat, wearily informed by the driver that pre-Christmas traffic had jammed up throughout London and that it might take as much as an hour to reach the Savoy. Ben was already late and wondered how long his father would wait before giving up and going home. Twenty minutes? Half an hour? What would be an appropriate span of time for a man who had not seen his son in twenty-five years? At eight thirty, still five hundred metres short on the Strand, Ben decided to walkand paid off the driver with a twenty-pound note. He resented the cost of the journey.

A small group of European tourists wearing brand-new Burberry raincoats were clustered in the art deco forecourt of the Savoy: tanned men with immaculately coiffed hair, their wives balanced precariously on high-heeled shoes. A doorman dressed in full morning suit scoped Ben briefly, saw that he looked respectable, and stepped aside to allow him through the revolving doors.

Polished wood panelling. Squares of blackand white stone set into the floor like a chessboard. The lobby resembled the set of some pre-war costume drama. Sheer nervous momentum carried Ben through the lobby, past whispering guests on sofas and a pretty receptionist who caught his eye. He found himself heading towards the source of some music, piano notes played lightly on the black keys, coming through a wide drawing-room area packed with tables and chairs. Everything to Ben’s eyes looked green and peach: the flecked, avocado-coloured carpet, the Doric-order columns finished in tangerine marble. More men in morning coats were moving soundlessly around the room, collecting trays of empty cups and spreading linen cloths reverently across tables. The white-tied pianist was playing on a raised platform at the centre of the room. Ben thought that he recognized ‘I Get A KickOut Of You’, but the melody was lost, chopped up into shapeless bursts of modern jazz.

Ahead of him, behind a glass partition, he could see people seated for dinner in the restaurant. Some of the tables looked out over the Thames. A group of waiters, many with grey hair, had gathered near what appeared to be a lectern at the entrance to the restaurant. The oldest of them, whom Ben tookto be the manager, broke away to greet him.

‘Can I help at all, sir?’ he asked in a thick East End accent. The man was almost entirely bald, with a dry, ridged complexion like the surface of a golf ball.

‘I’m having dinner with my father,’ Ben told him. ‘He should be here.’

‘The name, sir?’

‘His name is Keen. Christopher Keen. It was for eight fifteen.’

The waiter turned to consult his reservations book. Ben was almost too afraid to scan the tables beyond the glass in case he should catch sight of his father.

‘We don’t seem to have a booking for that name, sir.’

The waiter’s tone suggested that Ben had wasted his time.

‘Are you sure?’

He felt tricked, gripped by the sure thought that his father had bottled out.

‘Quite sure, sir. Of course, it’s possible that you’re dining with us in the Grill Room.’

‘The Grill Room?’

‘Our other restaurant, sir. You would have passed it on the way in. Just go backto the main door. You’ll find it on the right of reception, top of the stairs.’

Muttering an embarrassed thankyou, Ben turned and walked back towards the foyer. He felt rushed now, no longer in control. A slim French woman introduced herself at the entrance to The Grill and tookhis name with a smile. He was surely on the brink of it now, his father only seconds away. She was conferring with one of her colleagues, pointing out into the room, and when Ben looked up to take in the quiet formality of his surroundings he saw his father at the far end of the restaurant, seated at a table backed up against the wall. Their eyes met and Keen nodded, rising to his feet, a man of sixty who seemed never to have aged. A very broad, effortful smile and that steady, unreadable gaze that Ben remembered even as a child. His breathing doubled backon itself as he moved towards the table. Ben tried to set his face but the effort was hopeless.

‘Benjamin.’

‘Hello.’

A firm handshake, a contact of skin, examining his father’s face for the bits that looked like him.

‘It’s so wonderful to see you. So wonderful. Do come and sit down.’

Some men of Keen’s generation had faces weakened by experience, eyes and mouths rendered timid by the failures of age. But his father looked capable, renewed, not someone whom a younger man might profitably challenge. Ben was amazed by the preservation of his good looks; his father had the vigour and apparent fitness of a man half his age. He was, against all expectation, impressed by him.

‘Will you have a glass of something?’ he asked, and Ben nodded at the waiter, dryly requesting water as he sat down.

‘Nothing a little stronger?’

The question, quite unintentionally, came off sounding like a test of Ben’s masculinity. He felt automatically obliged to order a vodka and tonic. Already, so soon, he had been undermined by something like the force of his father’s personality.

‘I’ll have one too, Gerard,’ Keen said to the waiter, who deposited two menus and a wine list on the table.
He even knows the waiter’s name
. Sweat collected across the upper part of Ben’s back, the shoulders of his suit jacket now tropically dense and hot.

‘And some water as well,’ Keen added, fixing blue eyes on his son. ‘Gas or no gas?’

It was another question to which he must find a quick answer. Ben wanted to say that he didn’t care, but muttered: ‘Without gas, please,’ in a low voice. Then the waiter moved off.

Before he was out of earshot Keen said, ‘I wanted to thankyou right away for agreeing to meet me.’

‘Not at all,’ Ben replied, responding with a smile, and he was immediately frustrated with himself for adhering to decorum. He had badly wanted to make things difficult at this early stage, to find some dark expression of his contempt, but instead was playing the genial, even-tempered son.

‘I went the wrong way when I came in,’ he said, just to fill the silence. ‘Didn’t realize they had two restaurants.’

‘No,’ his father replied, and he might almost have been bored. Why had Ben expected it to be one-way traffic? Why had he thought that the evening would see Keen on bended knee, uttering a grovelling apology? There was no sign of that at all.

‘So why did you want to see me?’ he asked, and it was the first question he had set which carried any kind of weight. Keen leaned forward as if to draw the sting out of it, to envelop Ben in goodwill.

‘Well, it’s been too long,’ he said. ‘Too much time has gone by and I am responsible for that.’

‘Yes, you are.’

That’s better. Put him on the back foot. Claw back some ground.

‘Ah. Our drinks.’

Gerard was returning with two tall glasses of vodka and tonic, balanced on a chrome tray. The moment was lost.

‘Thanks,’ he said, taking a mouthful straight away.

‘Have they made it strong enough?’

‘It’s fine, thankyou, fine.’

‘I never thinkus Brits put enough booze in. Tend to hold back on the vodka, don’t you think?’

‘Really, it’s OK.’

The restaurant’s decor was a time warp of imperial England: more wood panelling, lamps with hexagonal shades bolted to the walls, even slices of Melba toast like dried skin racked on a plate at the table.

‘This a place where you eat a lot?’ Ben asked.

Why hadn’t he at least let the silence linger? Why had he felt the need to rescue the situation?

‘You mean, do I come here often?’

‘I suppose I do.’

‘Not infrequently,’ Keen lied.

Another waiter was standing stiffly beside his chair.

‘Are you ready to order, gentlemen?’

‘I haven’t had a moment to lookat what’s on offer,’ Keen said, idly picking up his menu. ‘Can you give us five minutes, Philippe?’

‘Of course, sir. I’ll come backlater.’

And he cleared his throat.

‘Let’s have a look, shall we?’

The simple act of opening the menus swamped the table in silence. Keen seemed oblivious to it, entirely at ease, but Ben was beginning to feel like a young boy on a day out from school. He spent thirty or forty seconds staring at the stiff cream card without registering a single one of the dishes on offer. Pumpkin Bisque with Ricotta PS7.50. Sole Veronique PS18.00. Pan-Fried Sea-Bass with Confit Fennel and Chorizo PS23.00. Breast of Chicken with Celeriac Fondant and Wild Mushroom Ravioli PS24.00. Trying to imagine what each of the dishes would entail was simply impossible: they were just words on a page, a blur of text. Calf’s Liver on Sweet Onion Tart Tatin with Sage Beignet PS18.50. Cannon of Lamb with Ratatouille and Basil Cream PS23.50. Even by London standards, Ben was astonished by how high the prices were.

Keen closed his menu with what was almost a snap.

‘Have you decided?’

‘There’s such a lot to choose from.’ It was another remark which Ben regretted instantly: his voice sounded childish and flustered. He looked back at the menu and simply went for the first dish that his eyes settled on. ‘I’ll have the Tournedos of Beef.’

‘But nothing to start with?’

‘Vichyssoise,’ Ben replied, vaguely recalling its presence on the menu. The words were out of his mouth when he remembered that Vichyssoise was chilled. He hated cold soup.

‘I believe it’s very good here.’

Keen ordered - he would have the pumpkin bisque and the cannon of lamb - adding petit pois and roast parsnips as vegetables for both of them. He then turned his attention to the wine list.

‘Do you prefer red or white?’ he asked.

Ben knew enough by now to express a preference and said ‘Red’ very firmly. So Keen passed the list across the table.

‘Have a look,’ he said.

‘Oh, I’m no expert,’ Ben told him, scanning the selection. The list must have run to ten or twelve pages, bound in a cumbersome leather case so heavy he had to rest it in his lap. ‘What about the Beaune Clos des Marconnets?’

He had simply skipped the cheapest four bottles and opted for the first red Burgundy on the page.

‘Very good,’ Keen said. ‘Very good.’ He adjusted his tie and nodded. ‘What year is it?’

Ben had to look again.

‘Nineteen ninety-five.’

‘Perfect. A bottle of Clos des Marconnets it is.’

‘And then I should head off and maybe wash my hands. Where would I find the gents?’

The act of splashing cold water on his face felt oddly self-conscious. Ben stared at his reflection in the mirror and exhaled heavily. He was alone in a gleaming bathroom with only an ageing attendant for company. The man, as old as the Savoy itself, came forward to offer a small white towel.

‘Is everything all right, sir?’ he asked.

‘Oh, everything’s fine,’ Ben replied, drying water on the back of his neck. He pummelled his face with the towel as if it would somehow rub the anxiety out from under his skin. ‘Just a bit tried.’

This is what it feels like to be drunk
, he thought.
Just can’t seem to get it together at all
.

The attendant proffered a small bottle of cologne which Ben declined. At waist level he caught sight of a small copper plate scattered with pound coins and reached into his pocket for a tip.

‘You work here all night?’ he asked, palming the man a clutch of twenty-pence pieces.

‘Oh no, sir.’ The attendant sounded surprised, as if no guest had bothered to talkto him in over forty years. ‘Just a few hours at a time.’

‘I see.’

‘And are you dining with us this evening, sir?’

‘I am, yes,’ Ben said, moving towards the door.

‘Well do enjoy yourself, won’t you?’ he said, wiping a towel across the sinks. The man moved with an arthritic slowness, the skin on his hands mottled by age.

‘Deference’ was the word in Ben’s head as he headed back across the lobby. He was beginning to realize why Keen had wanted to meet in such a place. The hot, formal atmosphere of the Savoy, the buzz and fuss of waiters, the businessmen whispering confidences at nearby tables; there was little chance of having a frankand revealing discussion in such an atmosphere. He felt that he had been tricked, and experienced a renewed determination not to be finessed by Keen.

‘Bit formal here, isn’t it?’ he said as he sat back down. He immediately tookhis jacket off and felt looser, more at ease.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Very old school.’ Ben looked back towards the foyer. ‘I just met Neville Chamberlain in the gents.’

Keen smiled encouragingly and rotated his glass through the air, advising Ben to try the wine.

‘You chose very well,’ he said. ‘It was a bottle I might have ordered myself. I actually prefer Burgundies to Bordeaux. Find they have more character.’

Ben did not reply. He was learning how to cultivate the silences.

‘A friend of mine from Russian days says much the same thing. Mark may have mentioned him to you. Jock McCreery. The three of us had dinner one evening in London…’

Again Ben said nothing.
Let him make the running
.

‘So tell me about your work.’ Keen seemed anxious to keep the conversation ticking over.

‘No. Let’s talk about you first.’

‘Fine.’

‘You worked in the Foreign Office for a long time.’

‘That’s right, yes.’

‘Which was why you left us, of course. In the first place.’

His father’s expression tightened.

‘I…’

‘Brother says you were in MI6.’

Keen had not expected this. Any rapport that might have built up between them was quickly dissipating. He glanced at a nearby table and muttered, ‘Well, of course, that’s a side of things one is encouraged to keep quiet about. You never know who may be listening.’