Chapter XXVI Canine Capers and Cannelloni

 

 

Whether the country was grateful or not I had no means of knowing. All I knew was that I felt very alone all of a sudden. I could not share my momentous conversation with anyone. Here I was in the eye of the storm of a large scale political and financial conspiracy and I could speak to nobody about it.

Not even to my mother. One of the first things Roger Clements wanted to organize was for a police surveillance team to visit my flat on Saturday and ensure that it was not bugged. I told him not to do anything until after my mother had left on Sunday. That precluded any discussion of anything substantial with her before she left.

Yet even this was a blessing. Talking to her about her cruise and discussing with her what she should pack and what she should see would have been reassuring to any of Nafta Ural’s potential eavesdroppers as it implied that I was still on the hook. Not unless, of course, Kolovetsky had told them that I had paid for the holiday myself. This I could not prejudge.

On Sunday morning Margaret Appelbaum drove round in her Range Rover with her mother and her mother’s trunks all packed. My own mother was thrilled like a little child as she got into the car. Margaret and I packed away her things and they all dropped in for a last minute cup of tea before hitting the M3 towards Southampton. She gave me her last minute instructions about the milk, the newspapers, the dustmen, and the postman. Then we got onto more personal matters. Will I remember to vacuum the sitting room and the hall, and tidy my room and not make a mess in the kitchen? If I was to bring in any friends, and especially what she called “lady-friends”, would they please make the bed and make me breakfast and generally behave like scullery maids and not as ladies of the night. “I don’t want the toilet clogged with these tampons of theirs and their lipstick on your pillow case…,” she rambled on much to Margaret’s amusement and my growing embarrassment. “…And I don’t want them sleeping in my bed. I don’t want weird perfume smells and strands of strange hair, from her head and from anywhere else. And no stains in the bathroom…”

“M-U-U-M!”

“What?! Son, this is important. I won’t be here to look after you for 2 weeks.”

“And don’t I know it! Margaret, take her away. Mum, have a good trip. Live life to the full and I hope you and Salcha find yourself some decent Spanish boyfriends. And don’t fight over them, will you? I want you two on speaking terms when you get back.”

Ten minutes later they were off at last.

An hour after that, the surveillance team came round to sweep the apartment. After a short visit they left without finding any listening bugs. And now I suddenly felt lonely.

But not for long. Early in the afternoon Meena came in. She had now picked up the knack of getting into my apartment and surprising me as she knew the entry code to the building and remembered where my mother kept her spare key.

It was not just a social call. She had come with Ching, but also she had spoken to Susan Sweetman. She had agreed to meet us at an Italian restaurant near Framden Town Station. I left a message on Carlo Gambetti’s mobile that we were planning to meet Susan.

 We travelled first to for a long walk with the dog to Daffodil Hill to check out the controversial panoramic London view for ourselves. We stood amid the dog-walkers and the kite-flyers taking advantage of a somewhat windy and overcast day. The view was certainly breath-taking. It took in the Telecom Tower, the newly erected Big Wheel, as well as the Natwest Building, tucked alongside the Dome of St Paul’s. Further on the left, and somewhere in the far distance, the sun was still shining. The sun’s brilliant light was reflected from the copper roof of the Canary Wharf Tower, sending signals to the sky above like some giant Egyptian obelisk connecting with the sun-god Ra. This was a remnant of the old Thatcheropolis concept of city development without planning, resulting in its bold architecture and horrific transport problems. I knew that in the next few years there would be new structures whose designs had already appeared in the press; one notably in the shape of a gherkin, another called the Shard of Glass. The panorama was changing rapidly, with exciting new structures punctuating the grey skyline against a backdrop of the distant Surrey Hills. In this great panorama, even details of smaller landmarks like Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, or (my favourite) the wedding cake tower of St Bride’s, are already obscured and the same applies to the nearer tower of Framden Civic Centre, which only a seasoned Londoner like me would be able to spot.

 How would this view be affected then by the proposed towers of Pinkerton Plaza? Surely not that much. Meena and I consulted our map to make sure of the location. We suddenly realized that it would be much closer to Daffodil Hill than we thought, perhaps only a mile and a half away. I held my arm out straight and skewed my eyes along this primitive sight-line. We realized that because of their proximity the Pinkerton towers would smother the distinctive silhouette of the Framden Civic Centre Tower by filling the space behind it and, further away, blocking the view of the Houses of Parliament completely. To me this was unacceptable. I would be interested to hear the views of the experts.

 Having finished our panoramic survey, we chose to spend a pleasant afternoon with Ching wandering through the wooded wilderness of adjoining Prince Albert Park. I decided that, despite Roger’s warnings, I would indicate to Meena that, for reasons on which she had to trust me, I would not be supporting the Pinkerton Plaza development any further and that confidential information I had received suggested that there was unlikely to be any significant intake from the development for her two schools. She was astounded at first. I had to assure her over and over again about the change in my perspective. Eventually she nodded and said that she will prepare one of her friends, Angela Craven, who was on the Planning Committee, for the sea change. I urged her simply to warn Angela that I would brief her in the next couple of days and not to say anything more.

“You sly dog, Peter,” she grinned. “Always got something up your sleeve.”

“Well, the sly dog is Ching, not me. I think she wants to be rogered by that mongrel whose bottom she’s checking out at the moment.”

Meena looked round in alarm. She started calling Ching with her shrill high-pitched voice across the vast expanse of Prince Albert Park. Ching totally ignored her. “Meena, have you forgotten everything. Lower your voice and sound stern,” I suggested to her, laughing inwardly.

Much to my own surprise, it worked. She lowered her voice and called out her dog’s name again. Ching, reluctantly but obediently, trotted back to us.

“You killjoy,” I upbraided her. “Won’t even let her have her bit on the side. Just ‘cause he’s from the wrong side of the track. Let’s face it, Meena, you’re a racist. As far as dogs are concerned.”

She ignored me and rubbed Ching’s neck and smacked her gently on her haunches. “Good dog! Good dog!” she was praising her.

“So Meena, if I get Susan a job, will you rub my neck and smack me on the bum and say, 'Good dog?'”.

“Just you see what I do if you don’t get her that job!”

“I can’t wait,” I replied.

 The clouds were beginning to darken. We walked back and caught a bus, scrambling up to the top floor with the excited hound, which drew a lot of interest from fellow passengers from its ugly squat black face and its sneezes. From the bus stop we ran to my apartment block through a sudden burst of heavy rain as heavy as an Indian monsoon. We got to Frobisher Mansions soaked through. We started peeling off our wet clothes in the lift up to my apartment.

 The fresh air and the rain had been particularly bracing, and that made me mischievous. What is more, I felt particularly liberated in my flat with my mother gone. While Meena stripped off the rest of her clothes discreetly and dried herself in the bathroom I fetched her my mother’s new silk dressing gown, which I tossed to her after she had opened the bathroom door a crack. I asked her in turn to let me have a bath towel so that I could change in the sitting room. I uncorked a bottle of red Chilean wine and shouted to her that it was ready.

When she tentatively opened the door she was dressed in the silk dressing gown but with her hair still wet. I was wandering around the room, wine glass in my hand and with a naked torso and a bath-towel seemingly firmly fixed around my hips.  She walked forward into the room wrapping a towel round her head. She was immediately greeted by her dog. While she mothered it I walked round to her with an empty wine glass and the bottle in other hand ready to pour. She took the wine glass and, as I started to pour the wine, my towel “accidentally” fell off. I was as naked as the day I was born but still pouring wine into her glass. Meena had a sharp intake of breath, but I continued to pour as if nothing untoward had happened.

  My frolicsome mood must have imparted itself to her. We had exchanged drinking toasts and then kisses. Though she urged me to cover myself, the fact that I continued to ignore her pleas did not seem to embarrass her particularly. She allowed herself to be kissed, cryptically at first, and then passionately and intensively and we sank down to the sofa.

“What are you doing?” she asked. Stupid question, woman. Don’t talk!

I blocked her mouth with my mouth. She cavorted her face sufficiently to draw away. She took a deep breath and looked as if she was going to ask a question. I dreaded that. I wanted no questions about “love” and other such abstract topics. She looked at me and obviously, on reflection, decided that words would not be on the agenda. She let me kiss her again. At last my hands were free to roam around the undiscovered forbidden zone beneath the silk dressing gown. I continued the voyage of exploration with the sly silkiness and ultimate aggression of the plundering conquistador. Eventually she did not surrender; she counterattacked. By touching my outstretched manhood she indicated that this time she would be ready to go further. At last I, the human mongrel, would be allowed to perform the task that the real canine mongrel had been prevented from performing with Ching in Prince Albert Park.

Meena would not have been Meena had she suddenly not broken away from me again and reached for her handbag by the sofa. Out came a little silver packet carried by every sexual exponent of political correctness. I was concerned that this precision could cool her ardour, but I could see her little row of teeth biting into her lower lip with concentration as she extracted the little rubbery filling out of this package and proceeded with sustained concentration to stretch it over the tip of my artillery and then rolled it down to the base with as much aplomb and sensitivity as Valentina at “Pinks”. She helped guide me into the tunnel of love while looking directly into my face and planting one kiss after another as inch followed inch.

If this kind of vanilla in a plastic package seems too tame and too clinical for those more addicted to darker variations, let me tell you that, pathetic male that I am, I succumbed to the pleasure fountain too early. Actually I blame an alarmed Ching’s wet nose poking up my bum as the final catalyst for my outburst. Ching had kept nuzzling her nose into the most interlocked parts of our anatomies either from concern over her mistress or from her desire to show us humans how true doggy-style should really be performed by a natural. Certainly Ching added to the performance while Meena’s exclamations of passion had to be interspersed with cries of “Down, dog! Down!” which at some stage I had even interpreted as being addressed to me.

Being a gentleman, however, I made up for my haste by laying Meena gently down on her back and helped her complete her side of the ritual by various lingual stimulations. She felt shameless and liberated too, as I had never seen her before.

We lay there for some minutes embracing and adjusting slowly to reality. I could boast to myself that for the first time I had managed to bed two of the most difficult female fellow Councillors in the space of 48 hours, but my vanity did not blind me so far as to assume that, as with Melanie, I had swept Meena off her feet. She had simply chosen to leap that day and had coaxed me to make the appropriate first move.

As I pondered on my luck, my mobile phone buzzed. I swooped on the little blighter only to find a message saying “Susan. Very interested. Can see her? Free tonight. XXX, Carlo.”

 I drove Meena and Ching to her house and even stepped in to share a guilty coffee with Meena’s mother. “And don’t you dare say a word to her about this,” Meena hissed at me. Nevertheless, we were looking at each other with some embarrassment and I’m sure that we appeared like an open book to Mrs Chakravatty. We had no time now to discuss the emotional fallout of our escapade. Time was pressing. We planned our next step.

There were no proper facilities for parking in the vicinity of Framden Town Station. We opted to take the Northern Line tube. The train was crowded with tourists and the evening rush hour. There were office workers, both middle aged and young, but mixed with groups of foreign youngsters, male and female, on their way to the trendy delights and late afternoon shopping in Framden Market, which was now such a popular Mecca for the world’s young.

I often wondered how this city of London was able to absorb so many classes of people and so many races and so many different faiths. London had over 4000 churches, 1500 mosques, 500 synagogues, over 50 gurdwaras and 50 Hindu temples, and yet the worship of mammon and the pursuit of pleasure continued unabated in yet more places of a different kind of worship. Prayer, work and pleasure existed side by side in this great metropolis and devotees of each travelled and criss-crossed side by side in these great underground arteries that pump the life blood into the city from below. British citizens and tourists travel unknowingly alongside illegal migrants and asylum seekers, outwardly apparently indistinguishable, but emerging from a stressed underworld of which their fellow tube passengers remained blissfully unaware. Three million journeys on the tube every day as passengers jostle each other and none of them emerging from their private self-made mental cocoon.

I wonder if some of them care to solve the inevitable silly riddles of the London Underground tube names that fascinated me personally. Why is it, for instance, that the Metropolitan Lane is the most non-Metropolitan, the one that has the largest amount of stations outside the metropolis? Why does the Central Line go furthest from what is Central London, while the Northern Line is the line that goes the furthest south in London? Why are the Victoria Line and the Jubilee Line virtually the only two lines that were not in existence at the time of Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee?

Normally Londoners, regardless of their nationality, live and travel in a crowded city without reflecting on the wonders and mysteries of the London Underground and without mutual human contact. They respect each other’s space, say “sorry” if they bump into each other and inhabit their private world, with or without their mobile, without wishing to impose themselves on their neighbours. Passengers talking loudly on mobile phones are common but are frowned upon. For a Londoner that is just not the cool thing to do. Even when larger groups travel together and chat animatedly with each other they still tend to respect this private cocoon within which their fellow-passengers embark on the journey from starting point to their ultimate destination in the street above. Staff announcements about train delays and aggressive buskers are met with pained silence; the silent groans of passengers are eloquent in their voicelessness. Newspapers are the private property of each passenger and recognized as part of his private territory, so the faces of his travelling companions remain averted in order not to impose on his reading, unless and until the passenger leaves the train and donates his newspaper to the people of London by leaving it generously on his seat. Even when passengers are packed in like sardines with armpits and breasts poking into noses and faces, the rule of the private world of each passenger remains unbreached by the proximity of your fellow human beings. A passenger can pick his nose and his travelling companions refuse even to register this to themselves. Actual sounds, smells, physical pressure are eradicated from the consciousness of each Londoner as if they never existed and as if each human sardine had the living room of a sperm whale.  

When the train empties new passengers would take up seats in geometrical patterns leaving a sufficient number of seats between themselves and existing passengers which would be recreated with mathematical precision along the whole carriage. I don’t know whether Mondrian ever used the Northern Line but I think his paintings were a reflection of the casual seating arrangements of  London tube travellers. When the train arrives at a new station, an existing passenger would consider it rude to move away from another existing fellow passenger even if the rest of the carriage was virtually empty. Yet despite the proximity, their mutual silence within their private space envelopes would not be compromised by a smile or a nod, let alone a word or a sentence, for the rest of the journey.      

     When I travel alone I respect the traditional reserve of Londoners. My fellow passengers remain at most a subject for quiet contemplation by myself. They do not become an audience for my eccentricities. However, once I had gained a travelling companion, such as Meena, I can engage in loud conversation speaking as a seasoned Londoner who is aware that any of my constituents could be within earshot. My irrepressible exhibitionism emerges like a rabbit from a hat. Phileas Fogg then takes a back seat. When we reach Framden Town Station, I continued my loud comments to Meena about the delights of Framden Market in the crowded, but otherwise silent, lift. The city workers sought to retain their all-purpose travel-cocoons all the way up to the surface and into the rainy street outside hoping to retain their private space intact against my unsolicited torrent of commentaries. Meena was equally loquacious but her comments were quieter and not intended for consumption by anyone except me.

Still talking, we breezed into the Italian bistro which Susan Sweetman had recommended. She was waiting for us with a bottle of white wine on the table, obviously ready to be entertained. It did not take us long to see that the waiters here knew her well and that she was used to being the queen bee, as two couples sitting at an adjoining table were exchanging jocular remarks with her with a dose of familiarity. For a lady seemingly in distress to whose rescue we were supposedly riding she seemed exceptionally elegant and at ease. She was wearing a black plunging V-necked top embroidered with an attractive trim around the neck-line and with a matching black trouser bottom and a loose scarf belt with sequins. The black top had a sort of floaty look, as did her eyes. She was obviously not on her first glass of wine. Yet her smile was warm and generous and the prefect row of top teeth appeared inviting. Certainly an invitation that my friend Emil’s male appendage had responded to rather fatefully in the past.

She and Meena kissed each other in greeting. I thought it best to keep my distance initially as I did not know her that well. So we just shook hands.

At first we let her talk about herself and her current position in the council press office. She managed to give us an amusing account of life with her colleagues but without being unnecessarily bitchy. She was aware that she would now be working her notice and seemed grateful that she was not dismissed immediately. In fact she implied that she believed that Meena and I had probably intervened on her behalf to let her stay temporarily and to cover up the cause of her imminent dismissal. This was not strictly true, but we saw no reason to disabuse her of that knowledge. She told us that she had found time to look around for job applications and had applied to an East London borough and a Home Counties district council. She was not really keen on either.  

By then we had ordered Cannelloni with Wild Mushrooms and the conversation turned to the subject of Italian food and wines, a subject on which she seemed well informed. It was obvious that Susan enjoyed her life. She seemed to be particularly warmly disposed towards Meena, but whenever I got the impression that her sexual preferences were same-sex, she would turn to me and envelop me in some kind of radiant glow of her personality that instantly drew me to her. For all her love of food, she seemed to be well proportioned and firm in body where she needed to be firm. Like French and Italian ladies she chewed her food thoroughly and slowly, obviously enjoying the prolonged taste of the foods as she digested. That, I believe, is the secret why so few French women get fat, as by digesting slowly they eat less and are less prone to hunger-induced snacking. Anyway, I could see why a reprobate like Emil had been drawn to her body, just as a magnet is drawn to the North Pole.

I asked her, out of the blue, if she had retained any contact with Emil Kapacek. She shook her head. Not even an e-mail had passed between them or a text message. She confessed that she had been very irresponsible as she was aware that he was married, but he had impressed her, as she admitted guiltily, as an influential and witty councillor who had the personality to rise high in the council hierarchy and who had enjoyed sexual power games with her. Perhaps on the model of Clinton and Lewinsky, I thought. She claimed to be besotted by him to the extent that she had not thought through the consequences, thinking only that apart from his personal attraction he would give her a chance to boost her career. Personally, I had been impressed by her professionalism as a press officer in the meeting immediately prior to the mayoral chair incident and felt that even without Emil’s intervention she would have done well. I told her as much. She beamed at me gratefully for this compliment and I felt the generous outflow of her sunny personality now concentrating on me with the same siren-like waves drawing me into her orbit. I could see how Emil could fall foul of such temptation.

“Emil always spoke well of you, Councillor Axtell. He liked you very much,” she gushed in my direction.

“Just call me, Peter,” I intervened. Those siren calls were having a hypnotic effect already.

“He said you would always see him through,” she gushed on, “just as he was always seemed ready to support you and promote you.”

Meena stepped in here sharply. “Well, Emil did leave us all in the lurch somewhat if you remember. Us being Framden Council as a whole.” She seemed anxious not to give the impression of any obligation on our side. Also the female instinct had come to the fore. She seemed aware of the power of Susan’s web. She had come to rescue the fly from the spider. “However, as you can guess we feel drawn to your plight by the feeling of a common bond, let us say, a certain shared experience. Peter has recommended you to a PR firm he knows which has expressed an interest in you as a result. Would this be of interest to you?”

“Councillor Axtell, what can I say? Thank you.”

“Peter,” I interrupted her again, “Peter. Just call me Peter.”

“Peter, thank you. How could I ever repay you? Please let me know.”

“Do you want to know more about this PR firm, Susan?” Meena intervened again. Was that a waspish buzz in her voice just now?

I described the role of “Whispering Trees” to her. She had heard of the company and was obviously interested. I remember seeing their flysheet on her desk. I chose not to say anything more and concentrated on finishing my cannelloni. I merely told her that, in view of her positive response, I will try and follow up the lead and tell them she was open to an offer.

After that our conversation drifted to where all high-minded public servants and principled public officials are inevitably drawn when the chips are down: personal gossip, preferably as bitchy as possible. I remember being told by an MP once that politicians are bitchier than actors and that male politicians are worse for this than female politicians. I had no wish to argue with that statement. Susan was giving us a worm’s eye view of how Council staff saw certain councillors. Meena was hooked by this and chortled wickedly over the descriptions Susan gave us of how Ted Grayson and Andy Trosser treated the media and would go out of their way to insult and mislead some of the tabloids. Meena and I shared Grayson’s prejudices against these newspapers, but I for one found this sort of attitude self-defeating and only confirmed and personalized the hostility of those reporters and editors towards us.

We ordered the sweet trolley and I asked to be excused for a minute. Unbeknown to Susan I stepped outside and phoned Carlo. “The fruit is ready to fall from the tree. She sounds keen,” I announced laconically.

Carlo checked the name of the bistro. “You still think she’s the right person for us, Peter? Not just one of your cast-offs?”

“Carlo, she’s the cat’s whiskers,” I assured her. “And she’s not an ex-girlfriend.”

“Really, what’s wrong with her then? Sorry, Peter, just joking. Give me half an hour and order me a cappuccino.”

I nodded to Meena when I returned. The girls were tucking into their tiramisu. We carried on with the gossipy conversation and showed no hurry in leaving the bistro.

Sure enough after half an hour, Carlo breezed in, saw me with a look of feigned surprise and joined us at the table. “What a coincidence, Peter, how are you? Please introduce me to your two lady friends, etc…”

After an initial foray into the wider world of gossip, Carlo and Susan descended into a more detailed technical half-world of publicity machines, PR stunts and spin-doctoring. They registered common friends and acquaintances and Susan ploughed through a short verbal curriculum vitae. Meena and I suddenly felt highly dispensable, except that of course I was the patsy left to pay for the bill for the evening. I was feeling somewhat embarrassed on my monthly budget after paying out for my mother’s cruise. As we got ready to leave and Meena and Susan slipped off to the loo, I was gratified to hear Carlo say, “Peter, I’m paying for the food. She looks good to me. She’s not leaving under a cloud with the council for any reason?”

“She’s not at odds with anyone on the council, let me assure you,” I half lied.

“Good. Peter, let me know the amount for the bill when you get your end of month credit card bill. I’ll write a cheque to the card company and you can pay it in. Oh, and thanks. Remember this Friday; we’ve got the Love Boat. Hope you remembered the tickets.” I nodded.

I left that bistro with an enormous sense of relief. It seemed that one dangerously loose cannon had been safely fixed and was now pointing in the right direction.