Mark Lee - The Canal House

Dear Nicky and Daniel: Richard says that he’s invited you both to the house party. I do hope you can come. Yrs. Julia Cadell .

That was all. Nothing personal. But when I handed the letter to Daniel, he read it several times. “She’s left Kosana.”

“Looks like it.”

“I guess she isn’t mad at me anymore.”

“She apologized to you. Remember?”

“I wasn’t graceful about that,” Daniel said. “I wasn’t graceful at all.” He stared at Julia’s letter as if her spidery handwriting could provide more information. “Want to go back to England, Nicky?”

“I’m tired of planting trees. I think I’m ready for hors d’oeuvres.”

I went back toDaniel’s tailor, got measured for a tuxedo, and flew to London that weekend. As soon as I arrived Carter Howard sent me north to photograph a plane crash outside of Edinburgh. A Boeing Airbus had been transformed into shards of burning wreckage scattered across three acres of muddy pasture. I took about three hundred shots, but Newsweek only used the one of a constable placing a woman’s shoe into an evidence bag. I kept fantasizing about owning a farm like Daniel and growing something that wouldn’t take a lot of work—wildflowers, maybe, or mistletoe. I didn’t know anything about farming, but I was getting tired of photographing disasters.

When I returned from Scotland I hung around the Newsweek offices for a few days and did an Internet search on Richard Seaton. I had assumed that Richard was created in the poor-boy-makes-good mold, but that wasn’t really true. His father was a solicitor in Chelmsford and Richard went to a public school—although not one of the famous ones. While a student at Oxford, he had leased and installed an ATM machine at the town bus station near Gloucester Green. The rest of his banking empire seemed to flow from that one act.

Until he met Julia, Richard was famous for dating beautiful women in the actress/model category. Searching through the computer archives of the British tabloids, I found several news photographs of Richard in a tuxedo standing next to actresses wearing dresses that contradicted the laws of physics. He seemed to prefer women who had slept with members of the British royal family. This preference led to a memorable tabloid headline: DASHING DICKY RECYCLES ROYAL REJECTS.

I found one feature article in the Guardian where Richard mentioned that he had met Julia during a Cambridge symposium on refugee problems. Last year, they had been photographed together at a charity event. When Richard became more involved with humanitarian organizations even the tabloids began treating him with respect. It wasn’t Dashing Dicky anymore, but BANKING MOGUL, RICHARD SEATON AND DR. JULIA CADELL AT OXFAM DINNER.

Daniel flew in on Thursday morning with my new tuxedo. I tried it on in my hotel room; then we got a taxi and went to Paddington Station. Our train rumbled slowly through the long, shadowy hall and then we were out and moving beneath a gray October sky. We passed council flats, gas works, parking lots and factories, little brick houses, each with a TV antenna attached to the chimney.

A doctor in Rome had cut off Daniel’s cast and removed the stitches. His hair had grown longer and he superficially resembled the same person I had met at the Stampa Estera. But Daniel held his body differently and his tone of his voice had changed. There was a dreamy intelligence about him, a preoccupation with other thoughts that made him seem like an absentminded mathematician. Before the plane crash in Africa, Daniel would have had his ticket ready. He would have known exactly when the train departed from London and when it arrived in Kemble. Now he smiled and fumbled through his pockets when the conductor came up the aisle.

After a short stop in Reading, we passed through a flat farmland with rolled-up cylinders of hay. I stared at the brown stubble on the fields and a red fuel can that would have been the center of a photograph. After we changed trains in Swindon the landscape became hilly and strips of forest appeared. Sheep grazed in the distance, little spots of white dotting the dark green grass.

Kemble was a neat and orderly town with signs directing you to the Cotswold Hills. Billy Monroe was out in the train station parking lot, leaning against a Jaguar sedan. He wore new jogging shoes and a blue warm-up suit. In Africa he had carried a submachine gun, but there were laws against that in Britain. Billy looked relaxed and friendly, as if he was the real host of the party.

“Good to see you two again.” He winked at Daniel. “They said you were dead, but I knew you weren’t. You’re too much of bastard, Daniel. Just like me.”

“We should form a club, Billy. Get a special tattoo.”

“Already got mine.”

We got into the Jaguar and roared out of the parking lot. Billy swore at every shuffling pensioner who forced him to use the brakes. We left the town in about five minutes and began racing down narrow country roads lined with hedges. Billy switched on the car’s tape recorder and French techno-pop boomed out of the back speakers.

“This is a bit more comfortable than Kosana,” Billy said. “Wasn’t that the fly-specked asshole of the world?”

“What’s going on at the camp?” Daniel asked.

“Most of the younger Karamojong ran off to steal cattle, but we’re not sharing that news with the contributors. A reporter from the Times flew to Africa with us on the second trip. He wrote a damn good article and the photographs were even better. There was a nice one of Mr. Seaton holding a sick child in his arms.”

“Why did Julia leave?”

“Because of the banquet on Saturday. We’re going to raise a great deal of money for Hand-to-Hand. Mr. Seaton hired two new doctors and they’re in charge of the camp. They finally sacked Steve Ramsey. I would have gotten rid of that wanker a long time ago.”

We came over a rise in the road and saw a gray stone castle in the distance. It sat about halfway up a large hill. A pine forest grew on the slope behind the castle and two parts of it curved around both sides of the building like the flanking wings of a green army. The car bumped across a cattle grate and entered a farmland area divided by walls and more hedges. An apple orchard was on our right, the bare branches of the trees outlined against the sky. Across the road a flock of sheep grazed on the grass surrounding a solitary beech tree. A bearded old man carrying a shepherd’s crook saw the Jaguar and touched the brim of his hat.

“Lonely job,” I said.

Billy looked amused. “It’s not what you think.”

“What do you mean?” Daniel asked.

“Mr. Seaton invited you here as friends so everything you hear and see this weekend is off the record.”

“Of course. We’re not working on a story.” Daniel glanced at me and smiled. “Just don’t ask Nicky to take any celebrity photographs.”

“Nothing ends up in any kind of newspaper.”

“You’ve made your point,” I said. “Daniel and I are on vacation.”

“All right. I’ll accept that as a promise. And promises are very important to me.” Billy downshifted the car. “Now, to answer your question, the shepherd is an actor named Charlie Drayton. I hired him for the weekend. The landscape designer thought that sheep would look picturesque for the party guests so we rented a flock and trucked it in from Wales. Charlie worked in one of the Riverside Bank television ads. He doesn’t know one bloody thing about sheep.”

“But he looks good. Nicky wanted to take his picture. Didn’t you, Nicky?”

When I nodded, Billy looked pleased. “It’s all in the details. Minding the details is why Mr. Seaton is a successful man.”