“And?”
“They’re upset. They don’t want to be associated with something like that. Particularly the Qataris. They’re very sensitive about that sort of thing.”
Jacob, two plane trees away now, seems to be asking someone else if he can pat their dog.
István walks toward him while Roddy explains that the outside investors were already waiting impatiently for István’s promised share of the investment funds to appear, “And now this,” he says.
“Yeah,” István says. He smiles tensely at the dog’s owner and indicates to Jacob that it’s okay if he pats it.
“There are two things we need to do immediately,” Roddy is saying now.
“Okay.”
“We need those funds, and we need them this week,” Roddy says. “Otherwise we may start losing people.”
“I understand,” István says.
“And I think we also need some positive PR,” Roddy says.
“What do you mean?”
“To push back against all the negative shit of this political scandal story.”
“I see.”
“We need some positive stuff out there at this point.”
“Okay. Like what?”
“Just some positive PR. Some puff pieces. A Sunday newspaper interview. Something like that.”
“With me?”
“Yes. Who else?”
“Seriously?”
“Why not?”
Slightly perplexed, István hollers at Jacob to slow down.
Jacob turns and waits for him.
“Okay,” István says.
Roddy tells him that he’s already spoken to some PR people.
“I think all that will help,” he ends by saying.
“Sure,” István agrees.
“The most important thing, though,” Roddy emphasizes, “is the money.”
“Yes.”
“We need to see that soon.”
“Yes.”
“People are starting to lose faith.”
“I understand.”
Pocketing his phone, István sits down on one of the curvaceous dark green benches that line the allée. Only Jacob’s presence prevents him from lighting a cigarette.
That evening he and Helen have dinner at 34 Mayfair and he tells her what Roddy said about the money.
“We need it,” he tells her. “We need it now.”
She says she’ll talk to Heath again.
Heath is the lawyer who oversees the Nyman trust fund.
Helen has been talking to him about the possibility of the fund making another loan to István, to finance the Rainham project.
Heath has to decide if this new “investment” is in line with the terms of the trust. István assumed that that was a formality. In the past Heath has always signed off on loans for István’s other projects, all of which were financed in that way, with soft loans from the Nyman fund.
The loan they’re asking for now is very much larger than any of the previous ones however.
“Is he being difficult?” István asks, sawing agitatedly at his steak. He’s having the A5 Wagyu with matchstick potatoes.
Helen has the char-grilled sea bass with nori butter, brown shrimp, and herbs. “Slightly,” she admits.
“What’s he saying?”
“He seems worried about how it will look.”
“How it will look?”
“Yes.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, it’s a lot of money,” she says.
“So will he do it?” István asks.
“Honestly?” Helen says. “I’m not sure.”
István stares at her for a second. It hadn’t occurred to him until now that Heath might actually say no. “Does he want something?” he asks. In the past Heath has been offered various inducements, financial and otherwise.
“I think he wants not to be struck off,” Helen says. “He’s worried, and I understand why.”
“You understand why?”
“Yes.”
“So whose side are you on?”
“I want this to work out,” she says.
“Why’s he worried about how it will look now?” István asks. “Why wasn’t he worried about that before?”
“When the amounts were small it didn’t matter so much. Now we’re asking for a lot. I’ll talk to him again.”
“Whatever he wants,” István says, “agree to it.”
She laughs at that.
“You know what I mean,” he says. “This is important.”
“I know,” she says.
“This is for us, and for Jacob.”
“I know,” she says.
When they arrive home she asks him if he wants to sleep in her room and he says yes, hoping that sex might make him feel less stressed out about it all.
For a while it does.
The idea that having separate rooms would mean the end of all that has proved entirely wrong. The sex, since then, has had an intensity that it hadn’t had for years.
He falls asleep with all the stuff about the minister and the loan and the other investors far from his thoughts.
When he wakes later though, it’s all there again.
Helen is snoring. Trying not to disturb her he slips out of her bed and pulls on his dressing gown.
He walks down the hall.
It’s already starting to get light. A faint gray is appearing at the windows.
In his own room he opens one and smokes a cigarette, leaning out. The window overlooks the garden, which is vast for London—maybe fifty meters long and twenty wide. It’s light enough now to see to the end of it, and quiet enough to hear a solitary bird moving in the leaf litter somewhere.
He shuts the window and pulls the curtains.
Knowing that he won’t be able to sleep again without one, he steps into his bathroom and takes a Xanax, and then lies down on his bed.
Helen has her meeting with Heath and somehow persuades him to sign off on the new loan. When she tells István he laughs with satisfaction.
“There is one thing though,” she says.
“What?”
“He said he’ll have to tell Thomas.”
István takes a moment to absorb that. He’s on the terrace at the office. The city looks totally gray today—there’s just this grayness out there, this miserable grayness, this midafternoon gloom. They’re talking on the phone. “Why?” he asks.
“He said he should have told him when he turned eighteen.”
“Told him what?”
“Told him everything.”
“Everything?”
“Yes.”
“Everything about the loans?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“I persuaded him not to. Now he’s saying he has to. He won’t agree to sign off on this one otherwise.”
Still trying to work out what this might mean, István says, “Thomas doesn’t need to agree to it?”
“No,” she says.
“He can’t stop it?”
“No.”
“You’re the trustee.”
“Yes.”
“So it doesn’t actually make any difference if he knows?”
“No,” she says. “Not exactly. Not practically.”
She says that she wants to tell Thomas about it herself, and arranges to have lunch with him in Oxford on Saturday to do that.
Thomas is in his second year at Oxford, doing History of Art at Magdalen. He works moderately hard. He smokes too much weed. And a few times a week he volunteers to help out at a homeless shelter in Iffley.
One evening when he arrives there’s a strange atmosphere.
There are quite a few people standing in the entrance hall, in silence, looking up the stairs.
Lucy is one of them. She’s another student who volunteers.
Thomas asks her what’s happening.
“Steve died,” she says, sort of hugging her skateboard.
“What?”
She nods.
“Steve?” Thomas says.
“That’s what they said.”
“Fuck.”
Steve was in his forties.
“How did he die?” Thomas asks.