A Scandalous Man
GAVIN ESLER
This book is dedicated to my friends from Iran, Turkey and the Arab world, India and Pakistan, whose friendship and love inspires me.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
Oh, when may it suffice?
Easter, 1916. w. b. YEATS
Birds make great sky circles of their freedom.
How do they learn it?
They fall,
And falling, they’re given wings.
Rumi, PERSIAN POET, 13th Century
Contents
Epigraph London, Spring 2005 London, 1982 London, Spring 2005 Pimlico, London, 1987 London, Spring 2005 Middleburg, Virginia, 1982 London, 1982 Hampstead, London, Spring 2005 Pimlico, London, 1987 Muslim College, Acton, West London Leila And Robin, 1982 – 1987 Her Majesty’s Treasury, Autumn 1983 Hm Foreign And Commonwealth Office, 1983 Regent’s Park, London Hampstead, London, April 2005 Arabic For Beginners, April, 2005 The Visitor, April 2005 Queen Margaret’s Hospital, Gloucester London, May 1987 Gloucester, April 2005 London, May 1987 Gloucester, April 2005 Hampstead, April 2005 London, Autumn And Winter, 1987-88 Hampstead, Spring 2005 Hampstead And Tetbury, April 2005 5 May 2005, Election Day England, Various Locations London, 7 July 2005 London Robin Burnett’s Story The Whisperer Author Note Acknowledgements Copyright About the Publisher
Father was murdered today. Or it might have been yesterday. He might even have tried to kill himself. No one can say for certain, and that is typical of father, slippery and devious to the end. The television news said he is not dead yet, or not quite. He was found in a pool of blood on the floor of his cottage, clinging to life. My first thought was that I hoped he survived long enough to suffer.
I heard the news late because I had my mobile phone switched off all day, working, and because I had a row with my client. This never happens. I am too polite for that kind of thing, but he was an up-himself New York corporate lawyer for a private equity firm that was trying to buy up half of eastern Europe, and I was helping them. I’m not particularly proud of it, but there you are. Not many people in London speak fluent Czech, and they paid me five times my normal fee for a bit of translation and a bit of interpreting, and probably would have paid me twenty times if I’d had the nerve to ask. The New York lawyer and I finished going through the paperwork enabling his company to buy a sizeable slice of the Czech economy which he told me he intended to ‘remodel’. He signed the contract as I spoke to his opposite number in Prague confirming the deal. At the same time he talked to his office in Manhattan. I could hear him gloating.
‘Get Karl and the boys down from Frankfurt,’ he told New York. ‘Pink slip everything that breathes and flatten everything that doesn’t. Terminate all contracts. We need everybody out of all sites and everything levelled with immediate effect. We need this turned by the end of the year.’
I was at the other end of the room but could still hear him yakking. He told me to give him the thumbs up the moment I had confirmation the contract was signed in Prague. When I did so, he told New York, ‘It’s done,’ and then put the phone down. He was beaming, as if he had just had sex. Maybe at that point he needed someone to boast to and I was the only one in the room. Whatever the reason he turned to me and said that in that one instant, in that one stroke of a pen, his company had made more than seven hundred million dollars. He personally had pocketed around thirteen million, and was going to find a club and what he called some ‘broadminded women’ to celebrate with. I ran off at the mouth.
‘You’re celebrating putting thousands of Czech workers out of a job?’
He looked as if I had just hit him, then he laughed and started putting his papers into his attaché case.
‘Interpret this, Harry: Welcome to globalization. Welcome to the world where you make dust or you eat dust. Welcome to the twenty-first century.’
Then he handed me my cheque with all the good grace of a client stuffing money into the bra of a lap dancer.
‘Your interpreting fee. A thousand. Don’t spend it all at once.’
I wanted to hit him. He waved a finger at me.
‘You wanna know why people like you don’t like Americans, Harry? Because we’re so goddamn successful in every field of human endeavour.’
That angered me even more. It had nothing to do with his nationality. It had everything to do with his behaviour.
‘I do like Americans,’ I protested. ‘Most of them. But some of you don’t travel so well. The ones who have no values except what you can pay for. People like you.’
‘Well, fuck you too, Harry,’ he called out with another laugh as he stepped out of the door. ‘When people say they don’t care about money it’s usually because they don’t have any. G’bye now. I’ll be thinking of you.’
When I cooled down, I went home and switched on the TV news, only because I wanted to hear if Blair had finally got round to calling the General Election. And he had. But there was also a big surprise. Father’s picture suddenly appeared on the screen as he crawled towards his footnote in history.
‘A reminder of today’s top stories: the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has given the go ahead for a General Election to be held