Michael Dibdin: Dirty Tricks

Our initial encounters were thus fairly furtive affairs, usually taking the form of trips to concerts and plays in London, where we could be reasonably sure of not being seen together by anyone we knew. Occasionally we risked going out to eat locally, and it was in the course of one such evening that our secret was finally revealed when we found ourselves sitting two tables away from a group including Thomas and Lynn Carter.

It was all rather awkward at first, with a good deal of pretending not to pretend not to be looking at each other. Finally Thomas came over and sat down with us. He pointed to Alison’s untouched portion of zuppa inglese .

‘Aren’t you going to eat that?’

‘Well no, actually.’

He seized a spoon and tucked in.

‘Call me Autolycus.’

‘I don’t get it,’ I said.

‘I do,’ sighed Alison. ‘And it’s terrible.’

Thomas fixed me with a merry eye.

‘ “A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles”. I didn’t know you two were seeing each other.’

‘We’re not,’ said Alison. ‘At least, we are , but …’

‘Well we are,’ I said. ‘Aren’t we?’

‘Well it depends what you mean.’

Realizing that he’d put his foot into wet cement, Thomas adroitly changed the subject to some problem involving the next meeting of the madrigal group.

A few days later Alison and I received invitations to dinner at the Carters’ the following weekend. The invitations were separate, but from the moment we arrived it was clear that we’d been invited as a couple. The other guests were a historian from Balliol whose wife sang with the group, and a senior editor at the University Press whose Dutch husband worked at the European nuclear research project near Abingdon. I was flattered by the quality of the company, and still more by the fact that Thomas had not invited any of the folk I’d met through Dennis and Karen. It was as if he wanted to make clear that that phase of my life was now over.

In return for his thoughtfulness I made a special effort to charm the other guests. The Dutch physicist, though a man of few words, was perfectly pleasant, and his wife was warm and witty, with a fund of anecdotes about a dictionary project she was supervising. The problem was the other couple. The wife was the classic North Oxford matriarch, that formidable combination of nag and nanny, like an intellectual Margaret Thatcher. She was undoubtedly the power behind the Chair her husband held, but he was an even thornier proposition. Eccentric as the comparison may appear, Oxford dons always used to remind me of gauchos , proud and touchy, wary and taciturn, their emotions concealed beneath the rigid code of etiquette demanded by a society where everyone carries a knife and is ready to use it at the least provocation. In such company the simplest and most casual remark is apt to draw a challenging glare and a demand to know your sources. It’s wiser not to say how nice the weather’s been, unless you work for the Meteorological Office. Despite your interlocutor’s fame and erudition, you mustn’t expect him to say anything remotely interesting. He has nothing to prove, above all to the likes of you. Don’t make the mistake of asking about his work, either. There are only four people in the world capable of understanding what he does, and he’s no longer speaking to three of them. And don’t for Christ’s sake mention yours, unless you want to be shown to the tradesmen’s entrance.

No, the only safe topic is gardening. Don’t ask why but there it is. You don’t need to know much about it, though a bluffer’s level acquaintance with the local flora won’t come amiss. But all that’s really required is to show interest and throw in the odd phrase like ‘My hydrangeas are very late this year’ or ‘Do you find tea roses take in this sandy soil?’ Not a big effort, then, and one I was quite prepared to make in the interests of cultivating a smooth and personable image. I’m happy to be able to report that it was most effective. One doesn’t expect conversation in England to flow, but this one oozed quite satisfactorily. Within a week Alison and I had been invited to sip sherry in North Oxford and drink gin in Abingdon. We were launched.

Everyone agreed that we were a delightful couple, perfectly attuned in some respects, piquantly complementary in others. If I had been less generous or astute I might have begrudged the time I had spent cultivating the likes of Karen and Dennis Parsons. But I was well aware that I was only regarded as a natural partner for Alison because I had money. Cash alone wouldn’t have made me acceptable, of course, but no charm, wit or patient attention to tedious monologues and appreciative laughter at stale jokes could ever have made up for the lack of it. As it was, the only obstacle to my complete conquest of Alison Kraemer appeared to be the implacable hostility of her daughter. Rebecca had taken against me with the passionate intensity of her age. I was yuck, I was gross, I was everything that was not awesome, radical, trif, wicked, lush and crucial. Alison in turn felt unable, so she claimed, to proceed further until her daughter’s opposition had been overcome. She just couldn’t, not while Rebecca felt the way she did, she just wouldn’t feel right. It never occurred to me to doubt that Alison would have come across if I’d pressed a bit harder, but that was just what I didn’t want to do. I’d done more than my share of pushing and shoving at fortune’s wheel recently. Now it was time to sit back patiently and let events take their course.

Karen’s death had made me a rich man, and after consultations with a financial expert recommended by Thomas I made a number of investments, the results of which astonished me. I’d had no idea until then that you could make more money doing absolutely nothing than you could in even the best-paid job. There was no point in my looking for work, not with the amount I was earning from the money I already had. Nevertheless I needed a cover. When people ask what you do, it’s simply not on, at least in the circles in which Alison and I revolved, to reply, ‘I sit at home in front of the TV while my brokers perform obscenely profitable operations with my accumulated capital.’ To provide myself with an acceptable occupation, I sank?30,000 in an investment which was, in a sense, to prove the most rewarding of all.

Following Clive’s conviction and sentence, the management of his business concerns had passed to his sister, a nurse who had no knowledge of or interest in EFL work. She therefore agreed to a buy-out proposal from a group of teachers at the school, who attempted to run the place as a co-operative. This lasted less than six months. What the teachers hadn’t realized was that the secret of the school’s success had not been their professional excellence but Clive’s unscrupulous and ruthless management, which they were neither willing nor able to emulate. That’s where I came in.

Buying a controlling interest in the OILC afforded me the greatest possible satisfaction. Besides giving me a colourable occupation — I appointed myself to the position of Director, while leaving the actual day-to-day running of the place to a salaried subordinate — it completed my revenge for the insults and injuries I had sustained in the past. Clive might have had my wife, but I had his school. I knew this would hurt him far more than Karen’s infidelity had hurt me. Everything he had lied and cheated and scrounged and gouged to create had been handed to me on a plate, as one more item in my varied and lucrative portfolio.

I soon turned the fortunes of the school around again by applying the methods I had learned the hard way from Clive himself. I offered the teachers a 25 per cent cut in wages and a one-year contract on the previous terms. Those who objected were dismissed. I then flew to Italy and tracked down Clive’s recruitment agent, who had switched to another school when the co-operative refused to pay his cut. In return for a percentage increase and a substantial cash incentive up front he agreed to forsake all others and cleave unto me. After that it was just a matter of finding an anal-obsessive martinet with a sadistic streak to act as administrator, while I swanned in from time to time and played at being busy. I remember my friend Carlos telling me that the difference between North and South Americans is that for the former power means being able to do whatever you want, while for the latter it means being able to prevent others doing what they want. At the time I was too much of a gringo to grasp the attractions of this kind of power, but as I lay back in Clive’s swivel chair, my feet up on Clive’s desk, admiring the view from Clive’s window, I finally understood. It is simply the most exquisite and luxurious sensation that life can afford, the ultimate peak experience.