3

The Train Journey

TUESDAY 1ST JULY 2008

As the train passed into a tunnel, Kitto, who had been looking out of the window, was confronted with his own reflection. Once considered extremely handsome, beautiful even, the middle-aged man with the lined face, bloodshot eyes and thinning hair who stared back at him was so unexpected that he winced and shrank into his second-class seat. He was only forty-three years old; who was this cadaver? What had happened to the luxuriant auburn hair, the hazel eyes, the high cheekbones and wide, slightly fleshy mouth? Kitto felt like a person who had mistakenly wandered into a fairground attraction, a hall of distorting mirrors. The only comfort was that she wasn’t here to witness his decline; he hoped her memories of him were preserved in the aspic of time.

The train left the tunnel and the monstrous image disappeared. Passing from Cornwall into Devon, the carriages rumbled along only a few feet from the seashore, travelling through small coastal towns. Kitto watched a lacy tide lapping a pebbly beach, a couple throwing a ball into the water for their dog to fetch and moored sailboats bobbing on a slight swell. He remembered days out to Teignmouth with his sister Blaze and their nanny, riding donkeys and crabbing in rock pools, and wished he had spent more time with his own children following similar pursuits. The train track turned inland and the coastline was replaced by hedgerows fluffy with hawthorn flowers, verges stacked with swaying cow parsley and grasses, lambs playing in acid-green fields laced with buttercups. Two horses, frightened by the train, wheeled around in their paddock and galloped away, their hooves throwing up clods of soft ground. Inside Carriage C, the temperature was kept at a constant 18 degrees; outside it looked considerably warmer. If only this train were going the other way—towards home, to Cornwall. He was the first Trelawney who had had to seek employment outside the estates or the House of Lords. It was dashed unfair but at least the drudgery was about to end.

In the next seat a young woman was listening to music, and a tinny noise relentlessly bled out of her headphones. Kitto looked at his watch—it was two and a half hours to London. He wanted a cup of tea but at £2.20 it seemed like a luxury too far. As Chairman of Acorn, the West Country bank, he was entitled to first-class railway tickets and, though he claimed this perk, he travelled in second and pocketed the difference, a useful £6,000 per year. As soon as my new investments come good, he thought, stretching out his legs as far as the second-class seat would permit, I’ll be back in First Class. His father and grandparents used to hitch the family’s own coach on to the London train, loaded up with retainers, clothes, bedlinen and the best china to make their town mansion appear a little bit like home. The Earls and their families hated leaving Cornwall but it was, at times, a necessary evil: when the House of Lords was sitting or a child needed to find an eligible spouse.

Outside the window, the sun, rising over gentle hills, cast long shadows and the trees were unruffled by wind. His family had once owned thousands of acres of this fertile land, all lost in one night on the gambling table. “Just make sure the sun doesn’t set on your watch,” Kitto’s father had warned him over and over again. “Don’t let the pride and glory of twenty-five generations end with you.” To make his point, the old man pinched Kitto’s arm so hard that the bruise lasted for weeks. If only his threat had also faded from black to purple to green and yellow, but it hung like a noxious vapour over his son’s life.

When Enyon had handed the running of the estate over to his son and heir ten years earlier, Kitto found that the cupboard was almost empty; there was no money and few easily disposable assets. He was presiding over the end of a dynasty and eight hundred years of hegemony, and, as the last man standing, knew he’d be blamed. He felt powerless but not culpable: someone had given him a beautiful toy without batteries included. Unsuited to remaking the fortune, Kitto had done the next best thing: he had married for money—and compromised his own right to be happy for the sake of the house. Blaze resented her brother for inheriting Trelawney; he envied her for breaking free.

The train rolled on, mile after mile, until, looking out of the window, Kitto saw the familiar shape of Reading Gaol and, lined up in the station car park, neat formations: rows of black or silver Mercedes, Range Rovers and Bentleys. His own car was a ten-year-old Passat.

He really wanted the tea. If he walked from Paddington to the office, he’d save the Tube fare—about the same amount of money. Tapping his neighbour on her shoulder, he got out of his seat and made his way through the carriages, past the businessmen hunched over their computers, the young lovers entwined, the dummied toddlers, wriggling babies and an elderly woman engrossed in a copy of The Lady. At the buffet car, the queue was mercifully short. Looking towards First Class, Kitto saw a stack of unread Times newspapers. Surely no one would mind, he thought, edging towards them. Just as he reached out to take the top copy, a hand clapped on his shoulder with such force that Kitto’s legs nearly gave way.

“Hello, mate,” a voice behind him boomed.

Mate? Kitto wondered if this was how the train police tried to sound contemporary.

“Kitto? It is you, isn’t it?” the voice asked.

Very slowly, Kitto turned around. The man before him was dressed in the uniform of the international super-rich: jeans and a jacket. It was beautifully cut cashmere but couldn’t hide the rolls of fat. The man wore a gold Rolex and, on his pinkie finger, a signet ring. He had short hair, a lightly tanned face and beady little eyes set in undistinguished features. Kitto knew with absolute certainty that the package—the jacket, the tan, the white T-shirt, the firm hand—reeked of importance. Whoever this person was—he was a somebody.

“Thomlinson Sleet, we met at Oxford. March 22nd, 1988. I was a pimply Rhodes scholar, hot off the boat from the U.S. A day I’ll never forget.”

“Of course, of course,” Kitto said, although he had no recollection.

“I didn’t see you, must have walked straight past. Come and have a spot of breakfast,” Sleet said and, without waiting for an answer, turned and headed back towards First Class. Kitto wanted to say no—he wanted to turn and run, tea-less, back to the safety and anonymity of Carriage C. Instead he followed. Sleet had sequestered two facing seats in the Pullman car.

“Jim,” Sleet called over the waiter. “This is Viscount Tremayne—bring him the works, please.”

Kitto saw a moment’s hesitation in Jim’s face—he had been trained to spot an interloper from Second Class—but whatever reservations he had were quickly overcome.

“Sit down, sit down, tell me about the last two decades. Who did you marry in the end? I assume it was the beauteous Anastasia.”

Kitto swallowed hard. “She went to India and never came back.”

“Did she marry a prince?”

“I heard she married a maharaja.”

“You keep in touch?”

“Only through the gossip columns.” Anastasia never responded to his letters but he’d never stopped writing.

Sleet hesitated. “What was it about her brand of beauty that was so bewitching? I suppose it was that Russian blood. And her backstory: weren’t her parents spies, killed in mysterious circumstances?”

“A plane crash,” Kitto said. “When she was eleven.” Nearly twenty years had passed since their last meeting, but his obsession had hardly dimmed with time.

“There are plenty of pretty girls…what was it about her?” Sleet leaned across the table and jabbed his finger at Kitto. “The two of you together were a poster for perfection. You dark and moodily aristocratic, her a perfect golden spirit.”

“It might have looked like that from the outside.” Kitto could only remember his increasingly desperate attempts to persuade Anastasia to love him and his ultimate failure.

Both men fell silent. Sleet tapped the table hard with his fork.

“You don’t remember, do you? That makes it even worse.” He clenched and unclenched his fist and, for a moment, Kitto thought Sleet might strike him.

“I’m sorry—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sleet shook his head and didn’t answer. Jim brought a full English breakfast. “Tea or coffee?”

“Tea—thank you.”

Sleet speared some blueberries on a fork and dipped them in a pot of yoghurt.

“Aren’t you having a cooked breakfast?” Kitto asked.

“Fuck, no. My trainer would kill me and the wife would run off with him. That’s the problem with being married to a younger woman—you have to keep up with them.”

“How old is she?”

“Twenty-eight—you’ve heard of her? Calypso Newsome—exVictoria’s Secret. Now Lady Sleet.”

“You’re a knight?”

“Can’t you tell?” He used his fork to imitate a sword and pretended to ennoble his coffee pot, touching it on the right, the left and then on the lid.

“What did you get it for?”

“For services to industry, which as we all know means giving funds to the dear old Tory party.”

“Well done, you.” Kitto raised his cup.

“I’d rather be a viscount or an earl but any amount of money doesn’t buy that now.”

“I’d sell it to you happily,” Kitto said, wondering if his titles were worth anything.

“Who did you marry?”

“Jane Browne.”

“Plain Jane Browne? The dumpy one?” Sleet looked surprised. “Are you still married?”

“We are.”

Sleet looked even more surprised. “You’ve done better than me—I’m on number three. A different mother for each brace.”

“What are you doing in this part of the world?”

“I own an enormous house near Reading. Not as big as yours, but a few more mod cons and a hell of a lot more acres. How’s your farm?”

“Difficult,” Kitto admitted.

“It’s all a question of scale, isn’t it?” Sleet said, as if reading Kitto’s thoughts. “I have fifty thousand acres spread all over the world.”

“Fifty thousand?” Kitto repeated, trying not to spray his host with half-digested eggs.

“Fifty-three thousand four hundred, to be precise. It’s all about IHT for me.”

“IHT?”

“Inheritance tax.” Sleet skewered a few more blueberries. “I can recommend a good tax planner if you want; she’s saved me a fortune.”

Oh, to need a tax planner or have millions to save, Kitto grimaced. He broke the yolk of his egg and used his sausage to mop it up. If he ate enough breakfast, he might skip the lunchtime sandwich. His thoughts turned to his eldest son’s school fees and the oil bill—both unpaid.

“Land is one of the most cost-effective ways of leaving money to the next generation. But farming’s such a bloody awful business that I have diversified by buying in different parts of the world. I have farms in Australia, Europe, America, the West Indies, just about anywhere. I grow all sorts, from hazelnuts to blueberries to corn.”

“Have you been to them all?” Kitto asked.

“Only if there’s an Aman hotel nearby.” Sleet roared with laughter. “In fact I own a few parcels of your old estates.”

“You do?” Kitto didn’t remember selling any of the land to a man named Sleet and supposed it would all have been done via a company.

“Remind me how you made your money in the first place?”

“I’m a prize cunt, otherwise known as an activist.” Sleet laughed at his own joke. “I buy flabby old businesses, break them up, rescue the good bits and flog off the dregs. If I can’t buy something then I look for distressed situations. If there’s money to be made off other people’s messes, I’m the first in.”

Kitto wondered if great success only came to odious individuals.

“What are you up to, apart from farming?” Sleet asked.

Kitto leaned back in his seat and pressed his hands together, wondering how to make his own portfolio of activities sound more impressive. “I’ve diversified over the years. I’ve created housing estates; I’m big in strawberries, given the Spanish a good run for their money; have a few hydroelectric plants, that kind of thing. Recently I became Chairman of Acorn Bank, the oldest institution in the West Country.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Sleet said half-heartedly “It was a building society that turned itself into a bank? Most of its funding comes from the wholesale market.”

Kitto nodded. “We made pre-tax profits last year of £52 million.”

“What’s your AUM?”

Kitto swallowed hard. He found financial terminology confusing. Over the centuries, the City had developed its own language, a patois sprinkled with acronyms and arcane shorthand. At first Kitto had been in awe of those who spoke it fluently, but realised quickly that the highfalutin words and terms were a way to aggrandise simple ideas and confuse outsiders. Though he’d made a huge effort to learn the lexicon, the misunderstanding of one simple term could render a whole conversation meaningless.

“We manage approximately £2 billion.” He hoped that was the right amount.

“Mostly from retail depositors?”

Kitto nodded. Tiny beads of sweat broke out on his neck. Please don’t let him ask any more technical questions, I am only the Chairman, he thought.

“You must have shat your pants after the collapse of Northern Rock?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Your portfolios are similar, lots of CDOs, sub-primes, issues with debt covenants; all the usual stuff,” Sleet said, helping himself to Kitto’s toast and smothering it with marmalade.

“Obviously,” Kitto said, making a mental note to ask his CEO to translate this jargon.

“Coincidentally, I’ve just bought your sister’s company. On my way there now to shake things up a little.”

“Blaze?” Kitto’s hand froze, leaving his fork loaded with egg and sausage hovering between his plate and mouth.

“Careful,” Sleet said, as a drip of yolk fell on to Kitto’s shirt. “Too late.” Sleet waved at Jim. “Bring him a damp cloth.”

Kitto took the proffered cloth and dabbed furiously at his shirt; he’d only brought one spare to last the week.

Sleet leaned towards Kitto. “What’s the intel on Blaze? She used to have a great reputation. Sharp as a tack. One of the best in the business, but she’s lost her touch. Are there personal issues? Death of a child? Cocaine? I’ve got to think whether to keep her on.”

“What’s she calling wrong?” Kitto asked, wishing he was close enough to his sister to ask her advice.

“She keeps giving interviews saying the markets, particularly the banks, are in deep shit, that we’re in a bubble that’s about to pop.”

Kitto felt even larger beads of sweat prickle on his back and hairline. The yolk had become an insignificant problem; all his worldly goods and a lot of borrowed assets were in a property bond named FG1, which he’d been assured was from a 100 per cent safe income-yielding fund.

“Is there anything in what she says?” he asked, trying to keep his voice level.

Sleet shrugged nonchalantly. “Maybe. I look at every prevailing wind as an opportunity to make money. If there’s a crash, I’ll scalp the schmucks.”

Reaching into his briefcase, Sleet took out a business card embossed with a coronet and his name, Thomlinson Sleet. There were no numbers or email addresses. Kitto looked at it closely. Under the name, in very small letters, he read: “And who the fuck are you?” Sleet bellowed with laughter.

“Genius, no? Wedding present from the third Lady Sleet. Now you see why I married her.” He hesitated. “For you, I’ll do the unthinkable and give you my PA’s number.” He whipped the card away and, turning it over, wrote a mobile number on the back.

“Can I ask you a favour?” Kitto said. “My son Ambrose needs some work experience this summer. Would you have anything? It doesn’t matter how menial.” He could only imagine how furious his eldest would be, having to forgo a summer at home in Cornwall.

Sleet smiled. “I love the idea of having a posh git fetching me tea and coffee. He can start whenever. Call my secretary. She’ll fix it.”

“Thanks.”

Sleet glanced at his watch. “Got to do a bit of work now. See you later. Chin-chin.” He looked down at his papers.

Realising he was being dismissed, Kitto got to his feet. Yolk-stained, humiliated and frightened, he made his way back to his seat. By the time he sat down, the train was trundling through the outskirts of London, past row upon row of red-brick houses. Was his sister correct? Had he, like so many others, bought into a worthless bond? Was it possible that he stood to lose everything? He thought momentarily about cashing in his investments but was reminded that he was Chairman of Acorn Bank, a person of discernment, a man who operated above and beyond tittle-tattle heard on a train to London.

It had been some time since Kitto had thought about Blaze. Occasionally he saw her profile in one of the financial pages and looked with interest at her photograph: where had the wild-haired, farouche woman gone? Was she buried under the highly packaged corporate façade of a sharp suit and lacquered hair? If it wasn’t for her face, he wouldn’t have recognised her. He missed her but knew that Blaze would never take his call. If only she’d tried harder to understand that he had never abandoned her; it was only a bedroom, an old aristocratic tradition. It hadn’t been personal.

The train slowed slightly and the carriage filled with the acrid smell of diesel on brakes. The girl next to him pulled her polo neck over her nose. Kitto wondered whether to change into his one clean shirt in the train or wait until he reached the office. At Paddington, he walked across the park to St. James’s. Although it was only the end of June, the grass had turned bare and yellow, and was littered with leftover picnics, beer bottles and rubbish. A woman tried unsuccessfully to control the greedy impulses of her dog. Two young policemen circled a comatose tramp. As he walked, Kitto thought about Sleet’s prediction. “Most fuckers will lose their shirts, a few will cream it.” Please, dear God, Kitto prayed, don’t let me be one of the fuckers.