Staff who were awaiting the allocation of further tasks had been told to stand with their hands behind their backs, but he saw from his new vantage point behind the bar that one or two still had their fists sunk into their pockets. The slumped ones tended to cluster together. The Poor Posture Club. When managing a large staff you had to keep an eye on all the factions; you couldn’t let the peripheral groups get disgruntled. Some of the waiters’ shirt collars looked wrinkled, and this was irritating. He’d supplied everyone with a little spray gun of starch, bought at his own expense from the Blue Door Launderette.
Plain-clothes Special Branch men stood motionless at the edges of the room. They had brisk, assertive eyes and when they spoke Moose thought only of right angles. So tall and solid-looking you felt a hundred gut-punches wouldn’t move them. Another eight or nine of them had, he’d noticed, been dispatched to the car-park area. Others were posted on the first-, second-and third-floor landings. It seemed an embarrassingly comprehensive security effort given the only halfway-visible threat was the presence, outside the front entrance, of six or seven student types in itchy-looking clothing. Was one of them Susie, Freya’s friend? Was that why Freya was in a murderous mood? Beyond the window these skinny probable-vegans rocked on the balls of their feet and chanted, ‘Stop the rot, stop the rot,’ without ever quite clarifying what the rot was, or how to stop it. He wondered what it would be like to be one of them, a person who devoted their days to the pursuit of major change. It occurred to him that his own life had been devoted to the opposite activity: the attempt to mould capriciousness into something respectably firm. He ate a blini.
A couple of top-tier journalists had arrived, a BBC guy and someone with a column in the Telegraph, and in their faces Moose found the closest mirror for his own tensely contained excitement. They ducked in and out of various groups, leaned onto tiptoes every time the revolving door whirred. Tomorrow’s dinner in the Empress Suite would be journalist-free. He needed to check with the External Events Manager that all was running to plan. He couldn’t see her. He sought out Marina instead. Marina usually had the answers.
She was bending to retrieve a napkin someone had dropped behind one of the gooseneck high-backed chairs. The napkins were conference blue, ordered especially from a supplier who’d seemed to understand Moose’s obsession with shades and textures in a way his own staff never had. As Marina got to her feet he moved to stand beside her and she said, ‘It’s not so beautiful when it’s full, is it?’ There was something a little mournful in her voice. They watched the twitch and throb of the party, women throwing their heads back in laughter, pearls strung around their elegant necks.
‘The bar?’ he said.
She shrugged. ‘The hotel.’
‘Not you as well.’
She frowned.
‘Freya,’ he said. ‘The people that I — that I care about, they’re depressed. Accommodating people is what we do, Mari.’
‘Were you always such a functional man, Moose?’
Functional. The word conjured up the big joyless filing cabinet in his office. ‘There’s nothing wrong with something fulfilling its purpose, if that’s what you mean.’
Her eyes went bright. She seemed about to laugh. Something malicious he hadn’t seen before? ‘What is your purpose, do you think?’ she said.
‘My purpose?’
‘I am curious.’
‘Well, today it’s about keeping Thatcher happy, isn’t it?’
‘And Freya?’
‘What about her?’
‘She seems miserable, you said. I agree.’
‘I don’t know what it’s about. If you know, I’d appreciate knowing.’
Marina twirled the napkin she’d retrieved from the floor. Several dots of red wine were sunk into the stitching. If this were Viv, she would be holding it further from her body. Viv would have it pinched between forefinger and thumb, at arm’s length.
‘If you know something,’ he repeated.
‘No. I don’t know what she’s feeling.’
Behind her, through the window glass, a greenish night took shape. ‘Maybe she’s got a boyfriend,’ he said. ‘She’s been out a lot. Maybe it’s boyfriend trouble. There was a kid called Tom who used to hang around a lot.’
‘Have you asked her?’
He shook his head. ‘If you had a daughter you’d know that questions like that never get answered. They stare at you in a way that suggests you’re a nutcase from outer space, Mari, and that the kindest thing would be to laser you into the ground. Pow. BZZZZZZ.’
He expected another smile, a warmer one, but her lips didn’t move. Had he been insensitive? Perhaps her own childlessness was a source of pain? Her easy warmth with Engelbert suggested she’d make a good mother. It wasn’t necessarily too late.
‘Engel OK?’ he said.
‘Yes. In your office.’
‘Good.’
‘I hope you don’t mind?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Emma is babysitting. He’ll sleep soon, I hope.’
‘Set up camp in the side room?’
Marina nodded. ‘She’s trying to tire him out. Last time I looked, they were making a castle from tinfoil. My sister would kill me if she knew he wasn’t sleeping.’
‘Have they found my rolls of tape? For the — the construction?’
Now the smile came. ‘Tell me, why do you need all this tape?’
‘I buy in bulk,’ he said. ‘Saves the hotel money.’
‘What about friends?’ Marina said. ‘Who is she friends with at the moment?’
‘Emma?’
‘Freya.’
Someone downed a glass of champagne and said, ‘Ahhhhh.’ A few jackets were being positioned on the backs of chairs. One woman had a bow tie draped around her neck. Mrs Thatcher was definitely late.
‘Well,’ Moose said, ‘there’s that Tracy girl. The one with the, how do I put this … with the fashion sense? And of course Susie Thingy, who I think is currently outside protesting against our Prime Minister, which is interesting. Have you noticed that there seems to be a fair amount of chatter about the PM’s speech tomorrow? About how if it doesn’t go well she might be, you know …’
‘I thought they don’t see each other so much these days. Freya and Susie.’
‘Yes, yes. Did I know that?’
‘An argument one or two weeks ago.’
‘How do you hear this stuff?’
She shrugged. ‘People tell me things.’
‘That’s what I’ve always thought about myself, that people tell me things.’
‘Maybe you don’t listen to what they are telling.’
‘That seems a bit harsh.’
‘Also silence,’ Marina said.
‘Sorry?’
‘If you create a silence, people speak.’
Silence fell. Moose made a point of not speaking.
Marina said, ‘She’s swimming again, no?’
‘Yes, yes. She’s definitely doing that. We went together, actually.’
‘That was weeks ago.’
‘It went well, though.’
‘You had a heart attack, Moose.’
‘Well … true.’
‘I was talking of recently.’
‘Right.’
‘Who does she swim with these days?’
‘Who with? One of her old swimming-team friends, I think. She’s a grown-up, Mari.’
‘Such as?’
‘As?’
‘Which friends?’
He sunk his fist into a flap pocket of his jacket. He’d cleared out all of the coins. Usually coin-play gave him comfort, the quick answer of cool metal in his hand.
‘Mari, is this an interrogation, or what? I’m supposed to be able to name them? Are you suggesting —’ someone shoved past him, rude, thoughtless — ‘that I’m, what, a bad father in some way? Because I’m trying to make the best of a tricky situation, you know. Her mother I get nothing from. I get sweet FA from her mother. I know I’m only a mediocre dad.’ He capitulated to a pathetically painful cough. ‘I’m trying my best.’