Exchange Place

Double Take

Kilpatrick could not wait to see the tie. He found a café in Rue Danielle Casanova and took a window seat. He unwrapped the package. The tie came encased in a mauve cardboard sleeve marked Charvet, and was further wrapped in a layer of tissue paper, mustard yellow this time. The tie was navy-blue herringbone silk with a muted orange diagonal stripe, and when he draped it on his hand the colours glowed and rippled in the sunlight. It would go well with the jacket he was wearing under the camel overcoat, chocolate brown with a faint orange windowpane check, William Hunt of Savile Row, he’d picked it up in TK Maxx in Belfast, down from four hundred to seventy pounds, he didn’t know how they managed it. He’d wear it with a pale blue Turnbull & Asser shirt he’d bought in a sale in their Jermyn Street shop when he was last in London. He remembered the statue of Beau Brummell on Jermyn Street, facing the Piccadilly Arcade, poised theatrically with one hand on his hip, the other holding his hat and cane. One of those generic bronzes that seemed to be springing up everywhere to obstruct pavements, it looked nothing like Kilpatrick’s mental picture of the Beau. But the pose reminded him of how, by all accounts, Brummell’s style inclined towards pure theatre.

The neck-cloth especially, and how it was tied. The Beau’s admirers would sometimes be invited to his dressing room to watch the procedure at close quarters. The neck-cloth was a triangle of fine Irish muslin, cut diagonally from a square yard and plainly hemmed. This was folded twice over at its widest point and wrapped carefully round the neck. Brummell stood at the mirror keeping his chin in the air before tying the tail ends in one of several manners. Each of these were in themselves signifiers of allegiance or taste. The next trick was to slowly lower the chin in a series of small ‘declensions’ that rucked down the cloth; the aim was to hold the contours of the neck rather than bulging out or folding inwards: a sort of self-sculpting, framing the face and defining the angle of the head. The folds emulated those in the clothing of Greek statuary. The line was understated, classical, seemingly effortless; the effect was nevertheless sometimes difficult to achieve. Brummell’s valet, Robinson, was once noted coming down the stairs with ‘a quantity of tumbled neck-cloths under one arm’. Upon enquiry, he replied, ‘These, sir? These are our failures.’ This too, was a manoeuvre, a piece of stagecraft. Robinson had no need to go out of his way to show the rumpled linen in public. He had been directed by his master to do so.

Kilpatrick stood before the mirror in Room 36 of the Hôtel Chopin, tying the Charvet necktie. For years he had employed a Windsor knot before reverting to the four-in-hand knot taught to him as a child. The Windsor was too square, symmetrical, bulky, the preferred knot of footballers. The aim of the four-in-hand was asymmetry, just that little bit of skew to give an air of nonchalance. The dimple, too, was essential, for without the dimple, the tie hung flat and inert against the chest, instead of making an elegant arch. Kilpatrick had spent months practising the dimple, spending hours in front of the mirror. Different ties required subtly different techniques. Different fabrics — wools, silks, cottons — had different tensile strengths. Some had better memories, held their shape better. Even now he had the occasional failure. But the Charvet tie knotted perfectly first time.

It is six o’clock and Kilpatrick is in the empty bar of Hôtel Nevers on Rue du Bac. He takes out the note the concierge of Hôtel Chopin had handed him earlier on. Forgot time, 7 at Rue du Bac, yours, Freddy G, written in Freddy Gabriel’s flamboyant italic. The paper is expensive, cream laid, matching envelope. Did he give Gabriel his address? He must have done. Kilpatrick is seated in a dark alcove. On the opposite wall is an Egyptian Empire Revival-style mirror, elaborate ormolu frame, the glass tarnished, speckled at the edges. He sees himself darkly. He adjusts the knot of the Charvet tie. His drink arrives. Ricard, a little ceramic carafe of water on the side. He pours the water into the Ricard. He likes this moment of anticipation, when it turns from clear to cloudy. He remembers the old Regency Hotel in Belfast where Bourne bought him his first pastis, a Pernod. Kilpatrick had never heard of it till then, had never witnessed that transformation. When Bourne poured the water into the two glasses it looked like a magic trick. Why does it do that? he asked. And he gathered from Bourne that the alcohol contained insoluble particles of aniseed oil, different density to that of water. You add water to the oil, it won’t dissolve. Instead it forms an emulsion. The light passing through the glass is scattered through internal reflection and refraction, that’s why it’s cloudy. Leave it long enough, it’ll separate out again, the oil will settle to the bottom. Nice green, said Bourne, eau-de-nil. If you had a glass of Nile water it would do the same, you end up with a glass of silt and water. Like oil paint, leave it long enough and the oil floats to the top, the pigment settles.

Kilpatrick looked at his watch. A quarter past. He ordered another Ricard. He’d have another one after that, it would set him up for the evening. The drink arrived. A man walked in and stood at the bar. Out of the corner of his eye Kilpatrick saw the man glance at him. He turned away, turned back again and glanced at him again. He heard him ordering a Ricard. The man poured water into his Ricard, watching it go cloudy. Again he glanced at Kilpatrick. As he did so, it occurred to Kilpatrick that he knew the man from somewhere. He was wearing a blue and gold paisley scarf, black and white herringbone overcoat. He was hatless, going bald, sideburns, florid face, moustache. He searched his memory. He saw a thinner, angular man within the flesh — boy, rather, for he hadn’t seen him since he left school, in what? 1967, over forty years ago. It came back to him: Chinese Gordon. Kilpatrick struggled to remember his proper name. Paul Gordon, that was it. Paul Gordon who was expelled for smoking dope, but then went on to Trinity to read Classics. He hadn’t seen him since. The nickname was inevitable after they learned in history class of General Charles George Gordon, dubbed ‘Chinese’ after his exploits in the Opium Wars. Come to think of it, with the moustache he looked a little like his namesake now, in his old age. Kilpatrick rose from his seat and Chinese Gordon came over slowly to him. We seem to know each other from somewhere, he said. Yes, said Kilpatrick, Chinese Gordon, I presume. Gordon laughed. Chinese indeed, he said, haven’t heard that for years. And you, I know you, but for a minute I thought you were someone else, but you couldn’t have been, for the someone else is somewhere else, I had to take a double take. You’re, forgive me, it’s been what? Forty years? Kill something, he said. You’re Kilpatrick, John Kilpatrick. He extended his hand. And who did you take me for? said Kilpatrick. Oh, someone I met in Paris, said Chinese Gordon. You’d hardly know him. Calls himself John Bourne.