The Stars’ Tennis Balls

YOU WANT A DUEL? YOU’VE GOT IT.

ALL FILES INFECTED. GOODBYE.

‘No … no!’ Albert switched his computer off and started it again.

‘Darling, what’s happening?’

‘It’s him, it’s him! He’s sent me a fucking virus. I can’t believe it. He’s destroyed the whole system. Oh, Jesus.’

‘But he can’t have done…’

‘He must be running a permanent search. He’s found the Australian site and knows it’s from me. Shit!’

‘All right, Albert. Calm down.’

‘I’ve still got my laptop. He can’t touch that. I’ll start again. Do it even better. Take it to a cybercafé. This is just the fucking beginning. Everyone’s equal on the net.’

‘Albert…

‘Can’t talk, Mum. Work to do.’

Portia closed the door and walked slowly to the kitchen.

The whole terrible truth had come crashing into her mind.

Ashley and Rufus Cade. She should have made the connection before and been on her guard. Ashley and Rufus Cade. And Gordon next.

A noise like a farmer turning hay with a pitchfork came through the kitchen hatchway. Gordon was sitting at the dining-room table shuffling through a heap of faxes. Portia thought she had never seen him looking so energised and alive. She preferred not to remember the dread she sometimes saw in his eyes.

‘We will fight on until my husband’s name is cleared.’

How many times had she heard that over the years from the spouses of Aitken, Hamilton, Archer, Clinton, Nixon and countless others who had faced scandal while their wives ‘stood by them’?

She knew that Gordon was not a wicked man. Like most people, he was a child anxious to be loved and like most men, a boy desperate to prove himself in the world. She could picture him doing so many bad things for so many good reasons. He had spent most of his life trying to catch up: A second choice husband living off the earnings of a wife who had married him out of pity and her own despair. At the start of their marriage everything had come from Hillary’s money. Portia had been the brilliant young student with the doctorate and academic tenure, Gordon had been the American outsider who never quite managed to fit in. Ten years of bluff talk to friends had taken their toll on his pride.

‘I’m in the financial advisor game at the moment.’ He was selling endowment mortgages on commission. Somehow worse, in Portia’s opinion, than double-glazing or herbal remedies.

‘A franchise opportunity has opened up. Looking at that quite keenly. Quite keenly.’ He considered managing a Seattle style coffee bar.

‘Business consultancy, as matter of fact.’ Nothing.

‘Broking soft commodities.’ Trading in coffee futures on the residue left by Hillary after she died. And losing it too.

And one last throw. The idea had come from Portia in fact, though he chose not to remember it. She had heard a programme on the radio about the low world prices being fetched for tea and coffee, a subject Gordon had been kvetching about for years.

‘Darling, I know it’s tough for you that the prices are rock bottom. But what about the pickers?’

‘Yes, well, obviously it’s tough for them too.’

‘Surely lots of people in the west would be prepared to pay extra for coffee and tea if they thought it would benefit the third world?’

‘That’s a brilliant idea, Mum.’

‘It seems to make sense.’

‘Porsh, it doesn’t quite work like that – ‘

‘What about it, Dad?’

‘I remember,’ Portia had continued. ‘Peter used to make us buy Nicaraguan coffee. To support the revolution and thumb a nose at America. You could buy it everywhere. Collett’s bookshop, health stores, those sort of places. They used to advertise it in the New Statesman. Peter even put posters up in Hampstead library.’

‘Sure, it sounds all very well in theory…’

‘Why did you call Grandpa Peter?’

‘Did I, darling? It’s worth thinking about though, Gordon, don’t you think?’

Finally he had achieved something. Success on his own terms.

Portia put her head through the hatch.

‘Gordon, I’ve got to go out for an hour or so. Got everything you need?’

‘Going fine, Porsh. Going fine. A lot of good evidence coming in from Africa, South America, Indonesia. It’s looking good.’

Portia smiled and gave a thumbs up. She had long thought that there was a melancholy air of desolation that hung over dining-rooms that were seldom used for dining. Gordon had spread papers on that table before and never with any good result. The smell of furniture polish and candle wax reminded Portia of death. Dead flies had been candied and preserved in the lips of a half empty port decanter and cobwebs furred the dried flowers and fir cones in the fireplace. She remembered when the mirror over the sideboard had been draped with black cloth. Peter, Albert and Gordon, their neckties ripped, had sat Shiva for Hillary on low wooden stools, Albert’s face so solemn and white that she had wanted to cover it in kisses and hug him close to her. Peter had stayed there the full seven days, mourning his wife and perhaps also the atheism and contempt for ritual of his only daughter. There was no hope to be had from dining-rooms. None at all.

Simon had enjoyed a busy morning on the telephone. He looked down at the To Do List on his Palm Pilot.

Letter to St Mark’s √

John √

Floyd √

Drapers √

Estate Agents √

Mbinda √

(Hotel?) √

Albert √

CE Shares √

DM √

As far as he could tell he was up to speed and on top of everything. He considered leaving early and visiting the nets at Lords for a little cricket practice. A small part of him, looking at the checklist, had whispered the terrible word ‘boredom’ to him. Soon, it would all be over.

Simon swore at himself heartily in Russian. Then in Swedish. A man of his capacity would never be bored. The idea was absurd. He could be anything he wanted to be. Writer. Inventor. Translator. Statesman. Broadcaster. Philanthropist. Collector. Playboy. If he was never bored in a small room in a hospital on a remote island in the Kattegat, how could he imagine being bored when the whole world was his playground?

His desk phone rang and he pressed the monitor button.

‘Mmhm?’

‘I’m so sorry, Simon. I know you said no calls. There’s a woman here. She says you’ll definitely want to see her. I wouldn’t pay any attention, only it’s Albert’s mother. I wasn’t sure if maybe…’

‘One moment.'

He pressed the monitor button again. His plans were so complete, so absolute, so thoroughly thought through. He had not expected this visit, but naturally he had considered it. He was ready.

‘Very well, Lily. Show her in.’

Simon rose from his desk and moved round to the sitting area.

‘Mrs Fendeman, do come in. Coffee? No, of course not. I’m sorry, that was … water, perhaps? Fruit juice?’

‘A glass of water would be fine.’

‘Would you, Lily? Thanks. Sit down, please, Mrs Fendeman. Tell me how I can help you.

Portia sat down. She found it hard to raise her head and look into his eyes.

‘I think you know what you can do, Mr Cotter. You can leave my family alone.’

Simon dropped into the armchair opposite. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘This is terribly difficult. Before you say anything else, let me tell you that I have absolutely no wish to hurt your son. He’s a very fine, very intelligent boy. You should be proud of him.’

‘I am proud of him. I don’t need your endorsement.’

‘Of course not.'

‘I notice,’ said Portia, ‘that you did not say that you had no wish to hurt my husband.’

‘Mrs Fendeman, it’s very important that you try to understand the complex relationship that exists between a newspaper publisher and his editorial staff.’

‘Oh please…’

‘Ah, thank you, Lily. That’s fine. Definitely no calls now, okay? Thanks, love.’

Simon watched her pour the water into a glass. She looked across at him and gave a sad half-smile.

‘If I hadn’t known when I came in, I would have known now,’ she said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘That habit of jogging your knee up and down. I can see you as you were. A little lost boy.’

Simon stood up. He took a deep breath. ‘Oh Portia,’ he said. ‘Portia. I can’t tell you what…’ He started to pace up and down the room. ‘I went to a lecture you gave last April. I have watched you in your kitchen, from the street. That same house in Plough Lane. I’ve read your books. I’ve seen your light in Albert’s eyes. But to have you here. It’s very.

‘There is no light in Albert’s eyes. Not any more. You’ve put it out.’

Simon had no wish to be side-tracked down paths opened up by Portia. ‘I suppose it was that page on his website, was it? I had a go too. Gave myself blond hair. Rather frightening. That’s what told you, is it? Or did you know before?’

‘I’m really not sure. I had only seen you on television and in magazines. There was something in my mind. A distrust. A worry, I suppose…'

‘A distrust?’ Simon came and sat down opposite her again. ‘How can you say distrust?’

‘An uncomfortable feeling. It should have been distrust. Please, Ned. I don’t want to talk to you about anything but my family. My son.

‘He should have been my son!’

‘But he isn’t. Half of him is Gordon, half of him is me. None of him is you.’

‘I know. I know. I thought … it crossed my mind … maybe you had lied about his age. Maybe he was actually two years older. Maybe he was conceived…’

‘There go those knees again…

Simon stood up. ‘But I realise that he is Gordon’s. What you have to understand,’ he started pacing again, ‘is what happened to me. What they did to me.’

‘Ashley, Gordon and Rufus. I know what they did to you.

‘You know? How could you possibly know? There isn’t the slightest possibility you could know.’

‘Gordon told me.’

Simon stopped and turned. ‘He told you?’ He resumed his pacing. ‘Yes. I see. He told you. I suppose that makes sense. You realised who I am and you told him. He confessed all and sent you to me. It makes sense.

‘You may know many things, Mr Cotter, but… ‘Portia, please. You know my name. Use it.’ ‘You may know many things, Mr Cotter,’ persisted Portia, ‘you may speak many languages, run many businesses and control many lives, but you do not know the first thing about people. Gordon told me years ago. Years ago. Around the time Albert was born in fact. It had been preying on his mind like a tumour. He had watched me go into the hospital and talk to your father day after day after day and he knew that he was responsible. It burned him up. He loved me, you see. He never stopped trying to find you. I gave up long before he did.’

‘That was certainly a clever way to win you. I never doubted his brains.'

‘Well you should have done, he hasn’t many. A good heart, but no brains. Look at the mess he’s in.’

‘Mess? Look at the mess that African tribe is in. A good heart?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. You don’t want a debate about moral responsibility do you? Do we prefer to treat Africans like children? When they hurt their own, must it always be our fault? Was he more wicked than the government that actually did the deed? More wicked because he’s white and “should know better” than those poor helpless little piccaninnies? Yes, it was wrong of him. It’s wrong of us every time we buy a doll made by children in sweat shops. Good, decent, high-minded, liberal men and women once stirred sugar into their coffee knowing it was picked by slaves. You’re wearing leather shoes, one day such an act will be regarded as the height of immorality. We buy things, we live in the world, we’re all involved, all messed up together in the same moral soup. For the love of God, how can you be so arrogant? Can’t you extend a moment’s sympathy to a man floundering in quicksand?’

‘A quicksand of his own making.’

‘That’s what makes it so pitiful still. If it was not his fault he could be like you and wallow in the luxury of divine rage. If fate throws brickbats at you, it’s easy. When they’re your own and they bounce back at you, it’s hopeless. It is his fault, so he … he pretends. You should see him… he’s so lost. So completely helpless.’ Portia was furious to hear her voice quavering and she knew that there were now visible tears in her eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Portia. Truly sorry.

‘I don’t want your pity, I want your promise. I suppose it’s too late to do anything for Gordon’s reputation, but Albert. Leave him alone. For God’s sake leave him alone.’

‘He’s the one picking the fight,’ said Simon. He was leaning against the opposite wall. ‘If I know him, he’ll be sitting in a cybercafé somewhere with a laptop, using an alias with a free account and not accepting any email for fear of more viruses. It’s quite an intellectual challenge.’

‘He’s a child. You can let go.’

Simon considered the letter he had written to Oxford that morning. A letter that would certainly reverse the college’s decision to accept Albert as an undergraduate.

‘I’m sorry, Portia,’ he said. ‘Everything is in train.

Portia looked at the space above his head. ‘Everything thoroughly thought through, in fact.’

‘One day you’ll understand.’

‘I can’t pretend that I know everything that’s happened to you. But I can see the result. Perhaps you should be thanking Gordon. You have almost boundless wealth and a mind that everyone assures me is terrifying in its breadth, knowledge and power. You seem to have everything that the world covets.'

‘Not you, Portia. I don’t have you. I don’t have your children. I don’t have a family history, a youth.’

‘Whatever had been done to him, do you know how Ned would have reacted? If Gordon had cut his arm off, say, in a fit of rage? Ned would have blushed and stammered and said, “Gosh, that’s all right. My fault, actually. Please don’t worry yourself. Awfully sorry.” That’s how Ned would have dealt with whatever fate had thrown him. With a dazzling smile and an embarrassed shuffle of the feet.'

‘I am Ned and that is not how I reacted.’

‘I don’t know who you are, Mr Cotter, but I can state with absolute assurance that you are not Ned Maddstone. I knew him well, you see.’

‘You will understand. And soon.’ Simon moved towards her. ‘I am not responsible for what is happening. All this will soon be over and you will understand completely. We will have time to talk and remember. You will see that I am merely an instrument. An instrument of God.’

From the doorway Portia shuddered. ‘Oh dear heavens,’ she whispered. ‘You poor man. I’m so sorry.’

Simon stood for while alone in the office, thinking. After a while he called Lily on the internal phone.

‘That post I put out. It hasn’t gone yet, has it?’

‘Still here, Simon.'

‘Bring it in would you? There’s a love.’

He found that he still could not sit down without his knees jiggling up and down, so he leant against the window as he reread the letter to St Mark’s. He laid it on the desk and smiled to himself. It could keep.