I Know What I Saw

21 Sunday

Money. With enough money you can do anything.

There was a time when the money men were Americans. There were a few Brits, but most were Americans whose names still ricochet across the ages: Buffett, Gates, Koch, Rockefeller and Trump. Now the money includes Arabs. I’ve seen the change. Sports cars tearing up Knightsbridge. Rolls-Royces in Mayfair. Their wealth is so great that it confers anonymity – the ability to move through the world behind privacy glass and high gates. To those that want to flaunt their wealth, the Louis Vuitton, Armani, Rolex, Cartier ensure that if they want they too can be anonymous by all looking the same. You couldn’t pick a single one of them out of a line-up. I remember those designers from my days in the City. But I never understood fashion.

Enough money and you could disappear.

Enough money can make whole streets disappear.

Ebadi, whoever he is, has enough to give him access to these roads. To park his car, to hold his parties, here in Mayfair.

Money.

I think about the money. Until we had that Chinese it hadn’t crossed my mind for years.

1989.

I try to retrace the path but there are wide gaps in my memory of it. It has been almost thirty years since she left London. Thirty years since I have seen her or heard her voice. I don’t know where she is. I don’t even know where she might be. Maybe I should ask Seb about her after all. Maybe even meet her again once more. Nina will know where she is even if Seb has lost touch with her.

One of the last times I saw her was in the house she had been renting north of the river after she left me. Her belongings were still in boxes mostly. A few had been opened and a loose frying pan or a dinner plate had been poached from here or there. A jade Buddha was on the mantel. Even after all this, a jade Buddha smiling vindictively. She seemed surprised to see me but let me in once the hesitation had passed.

‘So. It looks pretty permanent. This move,’ I said, brushing past her and looking around the living room cum kitchen.

‘It is, Xander. For us, I mean,’ she said, following me.

‘I don’t understand why it has to be. What was so wrong that we can’t get past it?’ I said, and even as the words left my mouth the sound they made me shrink.

‘I don’t know what you want me to say. We’ve grown apart,’ she said, crossing her arms.

Seeing her things here like this, things I recognised and felt were a part of us, gave me a jolt. ‘I just don’t understand that, Mabe. I haven’t grown apart,’ I said. I leaned against a wall to give her room to pass.

‘Then I have,’ she said. ‘And I can’t go through all that again now. Not here in this stupid house and this ridiculous furniture!’

‘But you don’t have to be here,’ I said, moving on to one of the old leather sofas. She looked at me for a moment and opened her mouth, then shut it again. Her hands were clamped together.

Ma belle. We can get over this. We have to because I can’t survive this life without you next to me. Look at me, I’m disintegrating. I’ve tried to rationalise my way out of it. The act of living is fundamentally solitary and I’m accountable completely for this situation. For all my situations. I am a function of my own choices and I can be happy through some other choice. I know this, intellectually. But look at me, Mabel, I’m fucked.

That’s what I wanted to say. Instead I looked at the floor.

She sighed. ‘Xander, why are you here?’

‘The money. I wanted to know what to do about it,’ I said, grasping. ‘But not just that. I thought we were friends still and that I could …’

Grace began to pace between boxes as if deciding and then undeciding which to open. She paused. ‘I don’t think we can be friends. Not yet.’

‘That’s fine then,’ I said, standing up. ‘Friends was your idea. Your choice not mine.’

‘I didn’t choose any of this, Xander. It just is.’

‘You did choose it. I chose you but you chose this,’ I said and waved my arms at the room.

‘That’s the problem though. I am not one of your choices. I’m independent of you. I exist autonomously.’

The words pelted me. ‘I know that. I just – emotionally, I feel tangled up in you.’

She took a breath. ‘Look, I know with your dad and everything … But that’s not an excuse for how you behave towards me. It just isn’t.’

‘I think that’s unfair,’ I said and felt my face run hot. ‘How I behave? Just me?’ When she didn’t answer I stood up to leave.

She caught up with me by the door. ‘Listen. Xand, let’s have dinner. Book somewhere nice. Do something nice, for me and maybe we can talk. Because I do love you. I just don’t love this. This side of you.’

I nodded but I knew everything was sliding away from me. I was being deleted from her life, like the pendant that had gone from her neck.

‘I want you to think seriously about it. Whether you can allow me to be my own person, make my own decisions, see who I want for coffee, without it being a row.’

She meant Ariel and my heart tumbled at the possibility of them together. I nodded and was through the door when I remembered. ‘The money,’ I said.

‘Keep it for now. Let’s see what we decide,’ she said.

Keep it for now. I remember now. She said it because she knew that she could trust me. And she trusted me with it because she knew I didn’t care about it. I never cared about money. I was never one of those people who did things with money. I’d met plenty of those others who could change everything with their money. They’d twist the world to do whatever they wanted it to.

And this guy, Ebadi, he could be one of these people. Men who turned up at his door in the dead of night. Men who turned up at the drop of enough money to rebuild, refurbish and clean up. I look up and I am at the door of 42B. The memories keep drawing me away so that my attention is splintered. I’m aware of it only once I am out of it. But I have to focus harder and harder to remain here. This burglar alarm. This incontrovertible thing. I have to think of a way around it.