Billionaires' Banquet E-Book

Ron Butlin

• Herausgeber: Salt
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 364

Beschreibung

The Herald 2017 Books of the Year 1985, Edinburgh. Thatcher's policies are biting deep – fat cats and street-kids, lovers, losers and the rest struggle to survive. Hume sets up a business catering for the rich and their ever-growing appetites. But by the new millennium, these appetites have become too demanding . . . Powerful, challenging and very funny, Billionaires' Banquet is an immorality tale for the 21st century.

Leseprobe

BILLIONAIRES’ BANQUET

RON BUTLIN

1985, Edinburgh. Thatcher’s policies are biting deep – fat cats and street-kids, lovers, losers and the rest struggle to survive. Hume sets up a business catering for the rich and their ever-growing appetites. But by the new millennium, these appetites have become too demanding . . .

Powerful, challenging and very funny, Billionaires’ Banquet is an immorality tale for the 21st century.

About the author

Before becoming a writer, RON BUTLIN was a pop-song lyricist, a footman, barnacle-scraper on the Thames and a male model. Widely translated, his work has twice been awarded a ‘Best Foreign Novel’ prize. His previous novel, Ghost Moon, was nominated for the international IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2016. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife, the writer Regi Claire.

Praise for this book

‘Butlin is a gifted writer. Insightful, wry and humane. Intensely readable.’ —Brian Taylor

Reviews of this book

‘Brilliant! … a suavely compelling, ceaselessly inventive entertainment … delivered with delirious aplomb … Butlin is both a master farceur and a merciless satirist.’ —RONALD FRAME, Scottish Review of Books

‘The language is sharp, funny and considered, and lends credence to Butlin’s reputation as an author of tremendous talent.’ —The List

‘At the core of Billionaire’s Banquet is an entertaining knockabout comedy about the way early ambition is tempered by reality, or how noble principles inevitably give way to self-interest.’ —The Herald

Billionaires’ Banquet

Before becoming a writer, RON BUTLIN was a pop-song lyricist, a footman, barnacle-scraper on the Thames and a male model. Widely translated, his work has twice been awarded a ‘Best Foreign Novel’ prize. His previous novel, Ghost Moon, was nominated for the international IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2016. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife, the writer Regi Claire.

Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

All rights reserved

Copyright © Ron Butlin, 2017

The right of Ron Butlin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

Salt Publishing 2017

Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-1-78463-101-7 electronic

To Malcolm and Béatrice McCallum for their unfailing friendship and support; for Anthony Pilley and everyone who stayed at Barclay Towers or picnicked on its roof; and for Regi, who picnics with me now.

BILLIONAIRES’ BANQUET

Prologue

Edinburgh, Midsummer’s Eve 1985

Barclay Towers was a split-level flat, four storeys above the Edinburgh streets. Four wearying flights of hard stone steps. The tenement was well over a hundred years old and when northerly gales swept down from the Arctic, its floor timbers shook, its large windowpanes billowed in and out like sails and, like a crows’ nest lashed to the tallest mast, the whole top floor shuddered in the storm. That was in winter. Come summer the flat entered calmer waters.

For once, it was a hot evening and the window had been propped open. Five of them were crammed around the kitchen table in the alcove where the maid would have slept a century earlier. No maids these days, and so they’d helped themselves. When the Cat finally arrived, the special Midsummer’s Eve spaghetti banquet was already over. She sat down. A candle was lit for atmosphere. Time for confessions, time to kill each other—

What’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told?

Your biggest regret?

Who would you most like to sleep with that you haven’t already?

Hume soon brought the search for after-dinner truth to a standstill. Said he’d been waiting for the right moment and could wait no longer. Jumped to his feet. ‘Back in a sec.’ Rushed out into the hall . . .

‘Where do you think you’re—?’ the Cat called after him.

. . . and returned a few seconds later, wine bottle in one hand and flourishing the latest edition of Thought in the other: ‘Howzat!’He held the journal open at a double-page spread: The Appearance of Reality and the Reality of Appearance, Dr S. Hume, Edinburgh. ‘Snappy title, eh!’ He uncorked the celebratory Don Cortez. ‘This’ll get me a job. A real one, a paying one. Mrs. Thatcher claps her eyes on it she’ll make me her chief advisor!’

Midway through taking his bow Hume winked, and killed the Electric Boy. Then with a quick one-two, killed St Francis and the Coconut. Bam-bam-bam, he was on a roll. Job well done, he left them to enjoy life for a few seconds longer.

Because those were the rules.

St Francis was the first to peg out, giving his best theatrical groan before slumping facedown on the table. Officially dead. Head on the tomato- and pasta-flecked pine, the once-upon-a-time junior priest counted out the regulation one . . . two . . . three . . . Then sat up again, officially resurrected. At once, he glanced towards the door. Glanced at it urgently. Gripping the table more firmly than he’d probably gripped any priest-school altar rail, he took a deep breath. Cleared his throat, stood up. ‘Goodnight, everyone.’

Just then the Coconut rolled her eyes and uttered a lady-like shriek that turned into a contented sigh as she collapsed into the Electric Boy’s waiting arms. Having given up the ghost, she gazed upwards expectantly. The kiss of life?

As for the Electric Boy himself – first to be killed, but still in the land of the living? Did their landlord consider himself one of the immortals? Hume took aim and killed him all over again. Direct hit.

Next, he turned his attention to the evening’s first-time visitor – a friend of someone who’d been invited but couldn’t make it. The instant black-haired, dark-eyed DD had come swaying in through the kitchen door with her midsummer smile and bottle of Blue Nun, Hume had locked on target. He’d launched into his well-practised routine of witty one-liners hinting at his more serious side, his hidden depths . . . and at bed.

Their glances met . . . and was that a for-your-eyes-only smile she’d just given him as he delivered the killer blow?

Back to the Electric Boy. Not still with us? Fucking McLazarus. Third time lucky. That was him eliminated, finished off, taken out. Dead, and no excuses.

Which left only the Cat, the last on Hume’s hit-list. Taking aim and—

But she’d turned away to call after the no-longer priest: ‘You’d better not keep me awake again half the night, Francis.’

‘She speaks, she speaks!’ cried the Electric Boy, who didn’t need drink or drugs as he’d come into the world fully wired, and was so deep-down drowned in love with the Coconut that he’d clearly forgotten how to die. So Hume killed him again.

Then leaning across the table in one smooth unbroken movement, he was about to catch the Cat’s eye when—

. . . she stabbed him. A vicious bee-sting of a wink. Venomous.

Killing him? But he’s the—

She was pissed off.

Totally.

Because he’d been treating the lovely DD to some hospitable flirtation? But he and the Cat had their arrangement, didn’t they?They were both free. Friends who frolicked and fucked, that was all. Not lovers. No love equals no jealousy. Has to.

Tonight, though, nothing could faze him. He’d be turning thirty next month and here, and not a moment too soon, was his first-time publication, the perfect alibi for his entire life to date. It vindicated six years’ selfless dedication, commitment and round-the-clock study. Validation, if any were required, for the one-night stands he’d needed to get himself through. Forget trying to sublimate sex into ever-greater heights of analytical thought – he’d managed a month’s consciousness-raising celibacy at one point, and nearly gone blind. But from now on, let the good times roll. No more signing on, no more on-the-side, cash-in-hand cramming ENGLISH FOR EVERYONE into roomfuls of foreign students. No more having to sleep in a cupboard. And so – Mr. Magnanimous – he raised his glass to toast the Cat as the evening’s femme fatale.

It was then that new girl DD announced a MIDSUMMER MADNESS disco was being held on the outskirts of town, and did anyone fancy coming along?

Hume did, in spades.

The Electric Boy declined, which surprised no one as he almost never left the flat. Ditto the Coconut, whose recent skull-shaver of a haircut – intended to keep any stray strands out of open wounds and give the emergency room drunks that much less to grab hold of or be sick over – had gained her a new name, and love. After gazing deep into each other’s eyes in a moment’s wordless communion, the two of them disappeared to the attic upstairs. The Cat said thanks, but she wasn’t up to it. Still wiped out after her finals. Needed an early night.

Hume gave DD his best puppy-dog look, a puppy-dog eager for walkies. Just them then.

‘It’s on the edge of town,’ she pointed out, ‘but we’ve still time to get a bus.’

The puppy-dog all but rolled over.

Straining on an invisible leash, he glanced back before leaving the kitchen to offer the Cat a half-apology/half-promise: ‘See you.’

‘Sure.’ She winked, getting him right between the eyes – a friendly wink this time, more or less. ‘Have fun.’

Out in the hall, Hume opened the door of the understairs cupboard: ‘Just a mo, DD. I’ll get my jacket.’ He clicked on the light.

She all but gasped. Surprise? Shock? Pity? ‘This is where you . . . live?’

Side by side, the two of them stood in the doorway and contemplated the low stepped-ceiling effect created by the underside curve of the staircase rising to the attic flat above, the books piled uneasily beneath the line of shirts, jerseys and jeans hanging on their nails. His narrow mattress covered the entire floor with only an inch or two to spare. It was a snug, windowless, Occam’s Razor of a fit, but the perfect accommodation for his low-rent, low-maintenance life. A life that was about to change forever.

‘Moved in here on the very day Margaret Thatcher moved into Downing Street. Got everything I need.’

‘And what’s that? Modern sculpture?’ She pointed to a hefty piece of sheet-metal that hung along the back wall, free to swing loosely in its iron frame. It might have been ideal as an extremely large dinner-gong intended for an extremely large mansion, but not for a cupboard.

‘Ah, yes. That’s the Electric Boy’s.’ Hume moved into tour-guide mode. ‘You’d think something that size would make my room smaller, wouldn’t you? The paradox is – that with it, my room can become even bigger! Close your eyes.’

‘What?’

He lowered his hand in front of her face as if pulling down an invisible veil. ‘Close your eyes. Sometimes, DD, the world is so much vaster than it appears.’ Bending down to avoid the low ceiling, he stood on his mattress. ‘Infinitely vaster, in fact. Think Doctor Who’s Tardis to the power 100.’

He reached across and gave the dinner gong a firm thump with his fist. CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-clang-clang-clang. . . the one note seemed to fill the cupboard’s interior a thousand times over, suggesting the ever-greater reaches of boundless space lying far beyond.

‘Fantastic, eh? Great for those thoughtful moments when—’

‘When you’re feeling a bit cramped?’

‘That too,’ he conceded. ‘It’s a homemade echo chamber, wired to the recording studio upstairs. Gives me an occasional glimpse of infinity, you might say.’

Also, the smaller the room the more likely was the occupant to score. No need to mention that, of course. But it was true. Like the first time he’d met the Cat in the university library. Him straying from the Logic & Epistemology section along a narrow corridor of stacked shelves to track down an essay by Poincaré on scientific method, and her coming from the opposite direction in search of a commentary on Russell’s Principia Mathematica. Cartoon-like they’d backed into each other.

After mutual apologies, a quick chat about Poincaré and Russell followed by coffee in the library’s basement cafeteria, he’d invited her back. And fucked her. That was the great thing about his cupboard – no room in it to do anything else. Once the Cat herself moved into the flat, things had become even easier. Separate rooms, but spontaneous, no-strings siestas any time of the day or night. Their arrangement.

He unhooked his jacket from its nail.

‘That’s me and my glad rags, DD – let’s go!’

As he clattered down the stairs to the promised disco and a let’s-hope night of passion with DD, the apprentice philosopher felt a momentary twinge of guilt. Unease, rather, he quickly corrected himself. He’d gone off and left the Cat behind, alone in the flat – St Francis didn’t count – in effect, abandoning her. Was she feeling sad, neglected? Lying slumped forward on the pine table as if she too had just been winked at and killed?

No, not the Cat.

And, anyway, he reminded himself, Wittgenstein had quite emphatically maintained that no one could experience another person’s feelings, another person’s pain. Close scrutiny of his unease would show only that he cared for her, which he did. Okay then . . . it followed that his sense of unease was not guilt, but genuine caring. He was feeling sorry for her at having to miss out on the disco. That was all. She’d been too exhausted to come out to play. She’d even said so herself.

So, no problem.

Besides, the two of them had their arrangement, didn’t they?

He and DD had now reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘Some Midsummer Madness, ma’am?’ He held the street door open for her. ‘Let’s see how really mad we can be!’

PART ONE

1

Running straight ahead from the Barclay Towers’ front door was a corridor – on the right the internal staircase that led up to the Electric Boy’s recording studio in the attic, Hume’s cupboard came next and finally the communal kitchen. On the left were bedrooms one, two and three – for the Coconut, the Cat and St Francis. The corridor ended at a frosted glass door – a small bathroom. All the rooms could be slept in; if the sleeper was well padded and under five foot four, the bath was reckoned to be very comfortable.

St Francis had the grandest room of all – a nearly intact cornice, a black marble fireplace, brass light-switches and polished floorboards. Whenever his bed was near enough the bay window, he’d prop himself up on one elbow to gaze out across the city rooftops or stare down at the busy main street and the tree-lined walks of Bruntsfield Links.

‘Stunning view you’ve got!’ Hume had commented as he’d helped him get moved in that first day, rejoicing, as a true philosopher should, at his fellow-man’s good fortune. To the windowless cupboard-dweller, of course, any view would have been stunning.

St Francis had glanced quickly round. Would Hume mind lending a hand?

bed over to the other walldesk and chair next to the bedwardrobe to stand opposite the fireplaceand so on

Twenty minutes’ push and pull later, the new layout was in place.

Or was it?

Having lost God, St Francis no longer took anything for granted, not even the furniture: ‘Still doesn’t feel quite . . .’ Could Hume lend a hand, again? Please?

The movables were once more Laurel-and-Hardied to and fro across the room. ‘Yes, I think that looks just about . . .’

Only to pause, glance round, then ask a moment later if Hume would mind lending a . . . ?

But Hume had run out of hands.

From the day he moved in, the former priest had kept his furniture on the move. By Midsummer’s Eve his elegant wooden floor had come to look like an ice rink scored by the blades of a thousand skaters.

It was after he had been killed off and was resting head-down on the kitchen table that St Francis had glimpsed the perfect layout of furniture for his bedsit room – everything exactly as it should be, as it had to be. Next moment, his part in the Midsummer Eve’s celebrations finished, he’d hurried back to his room and got straight to work.

The bed was dragged across the floor. The brick-and-plank bookcase was reassembled, relocated and rebuilt.

Status check?

Looking good!

Next, the bane of his existence – that two-door, double-coffin-effect tombstone of varnished gloom, his wardrobe. Victorian, cumbersome and too top-heavy for its own good.

He hugged the monstrosity as best he could in a fingertip embrace. Two half-steps, half-staggers later his fingers began to slip. He hugged it tighter. Another half-step, half-stagger backwards and—

CRASH!

He got out of the way just in time.

Quarter of an hour later, the job was done.

The room felt good, he felt good.

Good? Hell, he felt great! Then, precisely as in Brother Michael’s catechism class when everyone had been told to sit in silent contemplation of the wonder and perfection of God, he relaxed in his armchair the better to gaze around at all he had accomplished.

It was almost with reluctance that he eventually reached for his Mammoth Book of Crossword Puzzles.

From time to time during the next couple of hours he indulged himself with an occasional appreciative gaze around the room. Then it was back to Puzzle Number 25.

Puzzle Number 25 completed, he moved on to Number 26.

And got stuck. Seriously stuck.

He needed to focus, needed to concentrate. Again he glanced up—

His desk! What on earth had he been thinking? Next to that monstrous dark roar of a wardrobe, the poor thing was down on all-fours, almost cowering . . .

St Francis was so near tears he gritted his teeth. Clenched, swallowed. Month after month spent moving the same pieces of furniture around the same room, and he had achieved nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Once again his room’s disintegration, its imminent collapse, felt as close as ever. He sensed the long night stretch out before him like an unspoken threat and, beyond it, all the nights to come . . .

2

Midsummer madness was being held in a dead-end housing estate, an overspill reservation for the unwaged and unwanted at the edge of town. Probably there had once been plans to turn the abandoned church into a community centre, arts venue or the like. Probably the money had run out. It usually did. Which left the derelict shell standing isolated in a part-demolished nowhere land, adrift on a sea of waste-ground mud. This far from the main road, however, it was the ideal location for something late and loud.

Hume, DD and the others they’d run into en route arrived shortly before midnight. They picked their way across churned-up mud littered with charred timber, rubble, plastic bags and pools of rainwater. As though being shown their way out of the wilderness, they were guided by the noise ahead and the flicker of strobe lights that came through the few stained glass windows not yet bricked up.

‘Kirk Alloway aa in a bleeze!’ misquoted someone.

‘A real Tam O’ Shanter Night Out!’ answered the surrounding darkness.

Inside, the stone pillars and flagstones shook. The bass pounded the floor beneath them, they could feel it – 500 watt satanic music booming up from the Underworld. The air was rank with plaster dust, the stench of drains, sweat and dope. Mostly dope. The last of the ecclesiastical furniture and fittings – old pews, lengths of padded seating, the hymn board, rolls of rotted carpet – had been ripped out and heaped against the stone walls to clear some floor space for dancing. Having set up his turntables where the altar would have been, the DJ was flanked by two bathtub-sized speakers aimed directly at the congregation and loud enough to blast them all into Kingdom Come. Filled to the brim with blessed-again water, the font kept the beer cans chilled. The pulpit was still in situ, hovering ten foot or so in mid-air and reached by a narrow curve of staircase.

Romantic potential if ever he saw it. Hume led DD up the shaky wooden steps. At the top he stood aside, bowed to mime helping a lady into her carriage. He lowered the minister’s small hinged seat and then, in the absence of a holy cushion, rolled up his jacket to provide for his ladyship’s ease and comfort. The perfect gentleman.

They were able, just and no more, to peer over the carved lectern where the bible would have rested and watch the dancers cavorting below, crammed, sweating and mostly stoned. The pulpit shuddered to the bass beat.

Alone at last. Hume produced a can of McEwan’s Export. It spurted open. Just in time he jerked it to one side to protect her ladyship’s evening dress.

‘Scottish Champagne, tinned.’ Courteously, he wiped the lid before offering it.

‘Your good health, sir,’ DD toasted him.

As they passed the single can between them, Hume talked, shouted. Yelled. The music had been cranked up even louder. He discoursed at full volume on the revelries below – from the elevation of their pulpit they could observe how the dismantling of organised religion revealed what lay suppressed within us all, the elemental energies seeking expression . . . His philosophy paper, he went on to scream at her, was perfectly timed for the new era, it was a radical polemic that gave good old-fashioned values a good old-fashioned kicking. Taking Bradley’s iconic essay ‘My Station and Its Duties’ as a starting point, it presented a profound re-evaluation of the politics of individual responsibility that Mrs. Thatcher would . . . and so on, and so on.

His lady companion hardly heard a word but nodded politely every so often, drank her share when it was offered, and occasionally made comments that he didn’t quite hear. They drank to his catchphrase: ‘A modern ethics for modern times’.

Beer finished, he scrunched up the empty can and tossed it down to the hoi-polloi below. Bending nearer to bellow into her ear how beautiful she looked, he calculated that this was the moment to make his move. He had intended to conclude the compliment with a kiss . . .

. . . when all at once his eye started winking and winking and winking like he was playing the murder game again, and couldn’t seem to stop.

Who could he have been pretending to kill just then in that romantic retreat of a pulpit, in that wrecked church? Not DD, surely? Was it a tic of conscience re his cavalier abandoning of the Cat? An emergency light pulsing on and off, warning him that—?

Something of his distress must have shown for, after a moment’s hesitation, DD reached up and touched the side of his face, lightly, as if unsure she should. Her touch was calming, soothing. Under her fingers the jumping nerve eased gradually, and relaxed. When it finally settled, she withdrew her hand. Then, awkwardly almost, she leant towards him and kissed the hurt place better. Their first kiss. A healing one. Hers.

3

It was after eleven, the eve of the longest day of the year was drawing to a close and daylight fading to a final pale sheen. The Cat gazed out at the topmost branches of the nearby trees – clear-cut silhouettes, tangled bluish-black against the approach of darkness. She was tired. She wanted to go to bed, but remained there at her bedroom window tapping her fingers lightly on the glass. Hume was welcome to his disco. She needed sleep, sleep and more sleep.

For several minutes she stood watching the red tail lights of the traffic make their way up the left-hand side of Bruntsfield Place and the white front-lights come down the right. Most taxis returning to town had their orange FOR HIRE signs switched on. With a fingertip overlaying one of them, she tracked the taxi’s descent for as long as she could before it vanished from sight towards Tollcross. Then she tracked a second, a third. When no more appeared, she found herself, instead, pressing briefly on the pane to extinguish the glow of a sodium streetlight. Then, as if to turn it back on, she removed her finger, restoring its brightness. And moved on to the next. Turning them off, turning them on . . . Dab . . . dab . . . dab on the glass – such a familiar gesture . . .

So, so familiar . . . It reminded her of . . . ?

Reminded her of . . . ?

Then she had it. Reminded her of when as a little girl she’d dabbed her tiny wet-paint fingertips onto a sheet of paper to form the separate faces of a dice and see all its six sides at the same time – just like when she and her twin sister Kirsty stood in front of the mirror, one facing and one with her back turned to it, so they could see all of themselves at once. Dab . . . for one. Then dab . . . dab next to it, to make two. Dab . . . dab . . . dab in a slant to form three; a square of dabs making four, same again with a dab in the centre to make five. Amazingly, six could be two things at once – either two columns of three, or three horizontal lines of two. A magic number, someone told her.

1+2+3=6 and 1×2×3=6. Magic.

The more she’d learned about numbers, the more she came to feel their magic – negative numbers, unreal numbers, imaginary numbers, irrational numbers, transcendental numbers. Zero. Infinity. Most exciting of all was the isolated splendour of primes, their elemental mystery. Appearing always unpredictably and out of nowhere, they were like so many meteors fallen from the skies. They were not of this world.

The boys at school had seemed very much like primes – most were low order, of course, basic 3s, 5s and 7s, puzzling as all boys were, but nothing special.

From the day that Kirsty died the Cat had felt a responsibility to live and achieve for them both. She worked twice as hard in class and in the playground played for two. In time, this came to mean having to kiss and, eventually, fuck for two. Kevin, in the unknowable realm of faraway sixth year and whom she imagined as the intriguing and sexy prime number 179, she chose to be her fifteenth birthday present to herself. Letting him fuck her was like discovering the first in a new number series.

That girl DD and her disco . . . and Hume. Who cared? But smearing her fingerprints on the window pane wasn’t quite what she’d had planned for the evening . . .

It had been late when she’d left the University Library to set off home across The Meadows. The pitch-and-putt course had been deserted except for a couple of old men playing in the dusk. She’d stopped for a moment to share in the pleasure of their final game—

That was when, standing there in the near-empty park, she’d glanced up at the darkening sky and been suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of the absolute certainty of every single thing around her. It came out of nowhere. It blew her mind, utterly. The structure of every tree, every leaf, every blade of grass, the dynamic tension concealed in every drop of water vapour making up the scattered clouds, everything in the world, herself included, had felt perfectly integrated and in place. For one brief moment the individual atoms of the entire universe became a massed chorus crying out YES! in affirmation of existence.

How wonderful and how obvious!

She’d almost yelled back ‘YES! YES! YES!’ in reply.

Having hurried the last hundred yards or so home, she’d pushed open the street door, taken the stairs two at a time, ready to grab Hume the instant she was inside the flat. Ready to fuck his lights out – a fuck to celebrate the entire universe.

Only to find visitors. Visitors and cold spaghetti.

Through the window she could see the cosmic wheel had turned a few inches since that glorious moment in the Meadows. A few inches, a few million light-years. Orion, the Plough . . . She bit her lip remembering the great Cosmic Rush that had coursed through her.

And now?

She waited. Waited.

And nothing.

The wrong time? The wrong place? The wrong universe?

The wrong her? Certainly felt like it sometimes.

Time for bed. She really wanted to sleep, but knew she wouldn’t. Too wired up. What she needed was a bedtime story, something to soothe her, absorb her, something to drowse her until she slipped into dreamland. A few relaxing pages on the life and times of Nicolas Causanus might just do the trick. Although the sixteenth-century bishop had begun with the notion of God considered as the Infinite Being, his meditations had opened the way for Leibnitz and differential calculus. Fascinating work. Yes, Nicolas of Cusa was the man for tonight! She’d let him do the work while she turned the pages. After four years of pure mathematics she was tired of having to think for herself.

The girl who’d called herself DD (and what sort of name was that?) had straight black hair, very like hers, but shorter. Not bad looking in a clean-cut, determined sort of way. If Hume made it back from MIDSUMMER MADNESS alone, he was going to get dragged from his cupboard. If he was knackered, they could have fun unknackering him. Maybe throw in a few lesbian fantasies involving the clean-cut DD – that sort of pillow-talk never failed.

But in the meantime?

She reached over to give Nelson a scratch behind the ear. Woolly and one-eyed, Nelson was her closest companion. The lifesize wooden sheep, a jumble sale bargain, had been love at first sight – the nearest she’d come to it, anyway. He’d clearly been in the wars, poor soul, him and his one remaining eye. Loyal, trustworthy and a good listener with no desire to offer advice or share his problems, he was a vast improvement on most human beings. A modest green tuft of rug to stand on and the occasional pat was all he required. His kindly single-eyed gaze beamed benevolently on everyone alike. She gave him a wink, a friendly one, and reached for Mathematics: A Historical Perspective.

Okay then. Causanus. Her eyes glided over the first paragraph . . .

Maybe she’d get Hume to tie her up? Or, for a change, tie him up? Perhaps a spot of role-play – teacher and pupil, master and slave? Nelson could always be relied on to turn a blind eye.

Hume was primal, truly primal in every sense, pure ego held together by selfishness and lust. None of the usual body/mind dilemmas with him, no fragmenting into good bits, bad bits and lost bits. Not so much handsome as relentlessly keen. Emotionally a complete dud. Which suited her.

Back to Causanus. One page nearer to infinity and—

Their very first get-together in his minimalist cupboard had said it all. Less a no-frills fuck than a full-on mutual assault, and with no post-coital awkwardness afterwards.

‘That was really good, Cat. Thank you.’

She’d laughed. ‘Needed it, did you?’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’

At last, she’d thought, a truly eligible prime, solid to the core. Strangely, it had made her feel secure. Usually she felt secure only by herself.

They got together whenever the mood took them. They never went out as a couple and were free to see other people whenever they fancied. No deception, no jealousy, no feeling trapped – she’d felt better than she had in years. Even better when she’d moved into the room directly opposite his cupboard. No need for phone calls or letters – a glance across the kitchen table was enough, or a light tap on the door. Occasionally not even that. Pre-breakfast she’d sometimes woken to find him already climbing into her bed, or vice versa. Movable feast, movable fuck. Stability of a sort. Her work had taken on an intensity that was truly exhilarating. Just like when she’d looked up into the sky above Bruntsfield earlier, she’d come to sense almost physically the ebb and flow of mathematical forces, allowing her to solve problem after problem with an elegance that delighted her tutors.

An hour later, she looked up from her book. Had she managed to get herself so absorbed in Causanus that she’d not heard Hume return? It wasn’t so very late. He might have come back by now. It was possible.

Maybe she should go and check?

4

Hume and DD stumbled out of the derelict church into the early morning light, their ears numb. They had hugged and kissed away the hours on their high-above-it-all pulpit and now were brought back to earth, picking their way across the muddy waste ground. The opportunity to help his lady step over an oil-slicked puddle gave the gentleman the perfect excuse to take her hand, and keep it. Arms around each other, they passed through a gap in the protective hoarding that enclosed the demolition site.

No hanging around, not here. Keep moving. After taking a quick recce in every direction to make sure there were no late-night teenagers still out and about, no skinheads on the prowl for something, or someone, to do – Hume hurried them along a street of mostly boarded-up windows and the occasional burnt-out top floor. They moved rapidly past front gardens converted to dumping grounds for broken-down beds, abandoned cookers, rain-sodden carpets and sidestepped a gutted mattress that had been left to rot on the pavement. Stripped of its doors and wheels, a car rusted at the street corner. Total silence – no dawn chorus apart from the occasional screech and scuffle of seagulls among lidless bins.

Keep moving, keep moving. Street after deserted street was taken almost at a run until they reached the relative safety of the main road and its early morning traffic. Finally Hume slowed down and turned to ask her real name.

‘DD, like I said.’ She was a little out of breath.

‘Is that short for something?’

She whispered into his ear, shyly and so low he could hardly hear: ‘Diana the Damned!’ Then, before he could ask her to repeat what she’d said, she ran off in the direction of town, her high heels clacking.

The Council estate now a good half-hour behind them, Hume was growing seriously impressed. With DD leading the way, they had entered a part of Edinburgh where the socio-economic grades seemed to ratchet up at every corner. C2, C1, B. Here the newly risen sun warmed litter-free streets and hedges, its fresh new-day colours soaked into well-groomed lawns, neat flowerbeds and rockeries. The houses had front porches, extensions, conservatories like shrunk-down glass palaces. There were cars, garages. From the trees and gabled rooftops, early morning birds celebrated another day of peace and plenty.

As they advanced deeper into the Grange, with its sandstone walls, wrought iron gates, gravel drives, greenery and the occasional secluded mansion, Hume reflected on Seneca. Few philosophers had been particularly well-off, but at one point Seneca was reputedly the richest man in Ancient Rome, only just in time having the good sense to hand over his latest and grandest palace to emperor-pupil Nero whose jealousy was beginning to look murderous. Taking Seneca as a model, it could surely be argued that the search for wisdom and the pursuit of wealth need not be mutually exclusive. Indeed, it might be possible to maintain that—

‘Nearly there!’ DD called out. They were now in Dick Place.

To date, apprentice philosopher Hume had scorned luxury with its trappings of arrogance and privilege. But now, surrounded by the kind of affluence and solid success that can only be expressed upmarket property, he couldn’t keep a certain awe out of his voice:

‘You live around here?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Really?’

She turned to him. ‘Do I look as if I don’t?’

‘No, no . . . Not at all.’ Back-pedalling the tone of surprise, he switched to mock-charm: ‘For such grace and beauty as yours, anything less than a turreted, three-storey Victorian townhouse would be . . .’

‘You can come in, if you want.’ She’d stopped outside a varnished wooden door set in the high sandstone wall that bordered the pavement. She unlocked it.

A moment later, they were standing on a stone-paved path. Two lines of low trees arched above them – a guard of honour that all but blotted out the light.

The gate was relocked. Then DD was beside him again.

‘It’s only a small place really,’ she said.

‘Oh.’ Hume nodded.

Only a small place was precisely how Seneca was reported to have described his dangerously magnificent palace. The very rich love to play these games of self-deprecation, making their wealth seem of little consequence, thus glorifying it and themselves even more. Hoping to stay alive a little longer, Seneca had, of course, been desperate to be taken at his word.

Further down the path, the trees gave way to a modest parkland of lawn, bushes, more trees, flowerbeds; trellised greenery adorned the distant wall. From the back, the townhouse looked even more impressive: full-length windows, ornamental stonework, some stained glass, a couple of balconies. The roof had a shooting-gallery of decorative urns set along its edge, plus a gargoyle at each corner and more chimneys than he’d ever seen on one building before.

They passed under a second archway to arrive at lawn number two – houses like this didn’t have drying-greens. More flowerbeds, more bushes, a weeping willow that trailed its branches in the waters of an ornamental stone pool where a life-sized stone nymph bathed. A half-dozen or so golden-brown fish swam around her base.

‘They’re koi.’

Hume began working on the punchline of a possible joke about how they wouldn’t look quite so coy if . . . when DD added:

‘Cost over fifty pounds apiece, some of them.’

No joke then.

‘My rent is to feed them twice a day.’

The small wooden summerhouse was painted yellow, with one door, one window, slatted shutters and a metal pipe sticking out of its green-felted roof for a chimney. A MarieAntoinette-style imitation shepherd’s bothy? It really was small.

‘Is this where you live?’

‘For the moment. Usually I just play here.’ She went up the two wooden steps to the door.

Play? Marie Antoinette and her rustic fantasies was maybe not such a bad guess – some kind of full-sized doll’s house for adults and their adult games? Sounded promising. He followed her in.

The single room contained an easy-chair, a bed, a small table, a few shelves. A wood-burning stove stood in one corner. Most of the floor space was taken up by a piano, a baby-grand.

‘It’s Mrs. Chisholm’s piano. She lives in the main house. Dora is elderly and doesn’t play much now though we sometimes go through some duets. She’s a really good player. This was her practice room.’

Hume crossed to the window – the archways of flowers, the weeping willow, the nymph carrying an earthenware pot on her shoulders, tilted in readiness to pour herself a shower. Would there be a timer-switch set to send water splashing and bubbling over the mossy green nakedness of her stone breasts, before it trickled down to refresh the koi carp swimming below? First light had now finished colouring in the whole garden. The birds were building up to full chorus . . .

A perfect morning for the perfect summer’s day to come. Midsummer’s Day . . . So far the entire night with DD had been perfect, too. From the moment he’d first seen her come into the Barclay Towers kitchen, then the Madness disco, the pulpit, walking her home through the empty streets.

Time to move into romantic mode. That was what he was here for, wasn’t it? Romance.

Romance? Like the master and slave games he and the Cat had been getting into recently? Ordering her to lie back and lift up her skirt; and then, as he took her, she’d sometimes stage a slaves’ revolt and spit in his face, before begging him to fuck her as hard as he could. Good fun at the time, but with the inevitable aftertaste of disgust. Not that that lasted, of course – it never did – and soon enough the two of them would be at it all over again. Lust-and-disgust, lust-and-disgust . . .

Was that what he wanted here?

Of course not.

He wanted to take DD in his arms and kiss her. He wanted her to become the woman he’d always longed for, the woman he’d been hoping for all his life. The queen of his heart, the princess of his dreams.

They’d kiss. Their lips, their tongues would touch . . .

His hand would begin undoing the buttons on her blouse . . .

He’d lead her over to the bed where—

But then afterwards? Sneak a look at his watch to see if the buses were running yet?

Was that what he wanted? Was that what he really—?

5

The Cat put Causanus aside, got up and crossed to the door. Very slowly turning the handle, she pulled it open a few inches. She stepped into the corridor.

Not a sound from Hume’s cupboard.

From St Francis’s room came the muffled rumble-grumble of cushioned furniture being dragged across bare floorboards.

Holding her breath, she put her ear against the cupboard door.

Was that whispering she could hear? There was no light showing in the gap around the door frame. She pictured the two of them snuggled together in the dark, talking. Which, considering what she knew of Hume’s post-coital charms, meant they hadn’t yet got round to sex.

Or maybe the whispering was all her imagination? Should she ease the door open, just the very tiniest, littlest crack?

Not a good idea.

She tip-toed back to her room, back to Causanus. Next sentence, next paragraph.

Another paragraph.

Of course Hume was free to do whatever he liked, with whomever he liked. Just as she was.

But still.

It was after three when she went out into the corridor again to check on him.

Still nothing.

She strained and strained to listen . . .

Finally she opened his door.

Nothing. No one.

Having been to the toilet, she returned to her room and changed into her night things ready for bed. That was the plan. Instead, she sat down in her chair. Not reading anymore, not thinking even. Sitting. Feeling calm, quite calm. Wasn’t she?