Frank woke from shadowy, convoluted nightmares into a blizzard of remorse. He was in a strange hotel room, tangled up in smooth, unfamiliar linen sheets. The borrowed dinner jacket hung on a chair, spattered with ambiguous liquids and solids. Frank was not the kind of man who could easily shrug off humiliation, particularly not when he had inflicted it upon himself. Drink had got the better of him, but that was no excuse. He had let drink get the better of him. He had fallen down before it. Where now was his dream of culture, civilisation and European values? He had revealed himself to be exactly the kind of schmuck he had fought all his life not to be. He was a hayseed, a hick from the sticks. He had been found out. He loathed himself and he loathed his ambitions, aspirations and pretentions. He should have stayed home. He should have stayed in the shallow little duck pond he knew. He should have stuck with California, with boring, wholesome food, with certainties. All his problems had been caused by trying to be something he wasn’t. If he hadn’t opened Trimalchio’s, if he hadn’t employed Leo, if he hadn’t put Virgil in charge, if he hadn’t come to England, if he hadn’t accepted Kingsley’s invitation …
He was supposed to be in England looking for his son in order to discuss business. He hadn’t found Virgil which wasn’t so surprising maybe, but the fact was he hadn’t even tried. He’d just flown to England and got stinking drunk. He felt pretty worthless. Serious, successful, cultured businessmen did not find themselves apocalyptically hungover in strange countries, in strange hotel rooms.
There was a knock on the door, and before Frank could tell the person on the other side not to come in, that he wasn’t receiving visitors, the door had opened and a man he only half-recognised from the Everlasting Club had entered. Frank pulled the sheets around himself protectively.
‘Hello, Frank,’ said the intruder. ‘You remember me. My name’s Charles Radcliffe.’
Frank nodded unconvincingly. Oh Jesus, was there not going to be any let-up? When a guy’s made an asshole of himself, surely the least they could do was give him a day or two to live it down. He had barely woken up and already one of the club’s big noises was here, to do what exactly? Humiliate him some more? To tell him precisely what kind of asshole he’d been? To demand his pound of flesh?
In fact, Radcliffe was in the process of opening his briefcase and taking out a small, squat tumbler and a half-pint bottle containing some grey, inert liquid.
‘This will have you feeling better in no time,’ he said to Frank.
He filled the tumbler and handed it over. The idea of putting anything in his mouth was repellent to Frank, caused strange heavings to begin in his insides, but Radcliffe’s patrician manner was persuasive and Frank’s desire for penance was considerable. So he accepted the dubious potion and swallowed it down, taking his medicine.
‘There is quite a science to hangover cures,’ said Radcliffe, ‘to say nothing of folklore. But we could save that discussion for another time perhaps.’
‘Yeah. Perhaps,’ said Frank.
The drink settled in his stomach in a surprisingly benign manner. He could almost believe it was doing him some good. Radcliffe sat down on the edge of the bed, a little too close for Frank’s tastes.
‘About last night,’ said Frank, ‘I know what you’re going to say. I made a fool of myself. I admit it, okay? And I’m ready to face the consequences.’
‘What sort of consequences were you envisaging?’ asked Radcliffe, in a tone that Frank found inappropriately breezy.
‘Paying for the damage, or whatever.’
‘The only damage was that which you inflicted on yourself.’
‘Then maybe I should pay a club fine or something.’
‘No,’ said Radcliffe. ‘You were a guest at the Everlasting Club. Guests don’t pay for anything. Only members pay.’
Frank pressed the palm of his hand to his hot, pulsing forehead.
Not much chance of me ever getting to be a member now, right?’
Radcliffe looked as though he was giving the matter some consideration. Frank thought surely this must be play-acting. And when he said, ‘Well, I wouldn’t necessarily rule it out,’ Frank had to assume he was just being kind.
‘How’s business?’ Radcliffe asked.
‘Fine,’ said Frank, dismissively. If this was Radcliffe’s attempt to change the subject and make conversation he didn’t need it.
‘How many Golden Boys are there in the chain now?’
‘About forty,’ said Frank.
‘Do you own your own leases?’
‘Some. Why do you want …?’
‘Heavily mortgaged?’
‘Hey,’ said Frank, moving awkwardly under the sheet, ‘this isn’t my idea of the right time and place.’
Radcliffe ignored Frank’s protests. He said, ‘I know you used to have ambitions to extend your operations to England.’
‘That was a very short-lived ambition and it was a long time ago.’
‘There are people in the Everlasting Club who could help you realise your ambitions, whatever they are.’
It seemed to Frank that Radcliffe was talking about something other than just opening restaurants. He saw opium smokers, cock fights, group sex, sombre rituals involving semen and holy water. Or were these just the residue of the shadowy, convoluted nightmares from which he had recently woken?
‘I don’t have many ambitions left,’ he said.
‘I think you’re being too modest.’
‘No I’m not,’ said Frank.
‘We don’t have much time …’ said Radcliffe.
Frank automatically looked at his watch. True, it was late morning, but he could imagine no commitment, no appointment, for which he could possibly be late.
‘No, I don’t mean time in that sense,’ said Radcliffe. ‘I mean that life is short, far too short. We want to fill it up. We want more of it. But life in itself is nothing. A profoundly miserable life might seem very long indeed. A truly pleasurable life might flash by all too rapidly. To live to a “ripe” old age is fine so long as that life contains sufficient enjoyment. I believe there are certain techniques available for prolonging both life and pleasure.’
‘Like healthy eating?’ said Frank.
Radcliffe got up from his spot on the bed. Frank was glad. He relaxed slightly.
‘Look,’ said Frank, ‘you know, I’d be in a whole lot better shape to get philosophical if I’d had a shower and a shave.’
‘Perhaps I’m only really talking about money,’ said Radcliffe. ‘People, businesses, institutions, they come and go. Today’s household name is tomorrow’s obsolete product. But money just goes on and on. Money seems to be immortal. What’s your gross worth?’
‘Hey,’ said Frank, with as much indignation as he could manage, which wasn’t very much, ‘I’m not comfortable with this. I’m in a strange hotel room, I’ve got no clothes on and some guy I don’t know is asking me details about my gross worth.’
‘That’s right,’ said Radcliffe, pressing on. ‘And what would happen if you died tomorrow? Have you made provision? Who’d get control of the company? Virgil? And what if something happened to him? Or would Mary take the reins?’
‘How do you know all this stuff? How do you know my son and wife’s names?’
‘Relax, Frank. I read a profile of you in a trade paper, that’s all.’
That was possible. Frank had received enough publicity that someone might possibly have read and remembered the names of his son and wife. But did Radcliffe really look like the kind of guy who read trade papers of the American fast food industry? Everybody knew how devious the English were; perverse and duplicitous and vicious, and that was only their sex lives.
Now Radcliffe looked at his own watch. ‘It is nearly lunchtime,’ he said.
Frank groaned thinly. The hangover cure was working slowly, but he wasn’t ready to think about food, not even ready to hear the word.
‘I really don’t think so,’ he said.
‘I insist that you be my guest.’
‘No, really.’
‘Be a sport, Frank.’
Frank shook his head sadly.
‘You’re right, of course,’ said Radcliffe. ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch, just as there’s no such thing as free love. But sometimes it pays to say, hang the expense. The waiter delivers the bill. You don’t even look at it. You simply snap down your credit card. Whatever the meal costs it’s worth it.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Frank.
‘You will. Over lunch. At the Everlasting Club.’
‘Will they still let me in?’ asked Frank.
‘Of course.’
‘This is pretty white of you guys.’
As he showered and shaved, experiencing the wet spikes of water on his torso and the scrape of the razor blade across his cheek, it did not escape Frank that this was still not much of a way to go about finding Virgil. Nothing was being solved by accepting lunch from Radcliffe. Yet something told him it was the right thing to do. It somehow made sense to return to the dark, elaborate feastings and panellings of the Everlasting Club, back to those smells of Cuban cigars and roasting meat. It was a second chance. It was good to know he was still wanted there. This time he wouldn’t blow it. Radcliffe didn’t seem like such a bad guy after all, and he certainly had one hell of a cure for a hangover.
Frank dried himself with exaggerated vigour. He was starting to feel good. He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. If he tautened his stomach muscles only slightly he still looked like a reasonable figure of a man. He was ready for the Everlasting Club.
Radcliffe, inevitably, had a spare, unstained dinner jacket in his car. This invitation to lunch was apparently no spur of the moment thing. Frank slipped on the jacket. If he said so himself, he was the kind of guy who could wear a tux. He let himself be blindfolded and sat a little rigidly in the passenger seat as Radcliffe drove to the Everlasting Club. Frank imagined a day when this blindfold would no longer be necessary, when he would drive boldly and directly to the club, head held high, eyes wide open, and he would march straight in, proudly and of right. But not today.
When the car stopped Radcliffe retightened the blindfold and guided Frank across the pavement, along the short gravel path, up the steps and through the front door into the club. Frank heard the door close behind him. Nothing happened for a while.
‘Hey,’ he said to Radcliffe, ‘can I take this blindfold off now? Hey, did you hear me?’
He immediately realised that Radcliffe was no longer beside him. Where the hell had he gone, and why? Frank tore off the blindfold with some petulance and looked around the small hallway where he now stood alone. Three doors faced him. One, he knew, led to the bar, but there was something not quite right about this. When he had stood here before, a great wave of noise had pressed up against that door, noise from the bar, sounds of drinking, talking and partying. The thin door in front of him would not be enough to contain all that sound. Things had gone very dead in there. Maybe lunchtimes at the Everlasting Club were always quiet. Maybe there was another explanation.
Gingerly and with the hope that he wasn’t breaking some obscure but all-important club rule, he tried the door to the bar. He would perhaps have felt happier if the door hadn’t opened, but it did.
A part of him was already aware there would be nobody home, and yet the awful emptiness on the other side of the door still threw him. The big room was completely devoid of people. The lights were down low. A couple of logs glowed uncertainly in the fireplace. Every table was vacant, and the whole place was still and gloomy and deserted. And recently deserted too. There were half-empty glasses on the tables and on the bar, cigars and cigarettes were stubbed out in the ashtrays. It was as if everybody had simultaneously run away in fear and panic.
‘What the fuck am I doing here?’ Frank asked himself.
He walked a wide circuit around the dimly lit room. He peered carefully at the abandoned drinks and at the chairs that looked as though they’d been hastily pushed aside, but he didn’t know what he was really looking for. Clues? But he didn’t know what mystery he was trying to solve. Maybe there was a simple explanation. Maybe he’d arrived in the middle of a fire drill. Even he couldn’t be convinced by such a mundane explanation, and that didn’t explain Radcliffe’s disappearance.
Frank did not know what to do. Should he pour himself a drink and wait patiently for something to happen or for someone to appear? Should he shout, ‘Anybody there? Anybody serving at the bar?’ But it was perfectly obvious nobody was.
He felt like an intruder, like a burglar. Radcliffe had set him up for this and then ditched him. Was it possible, therefore, that this was some sort of test? Perhaps in order to be accepted into the club he had to somehow do the right thing. He could not imagine what the right thing was, but presumably it wasn’t helping yourself to free drinks. He decided to do nothing, just sit patiently, but his resolve did not last. This place gave him the creeps. Okay, maybe that meant he didn’t belong there. He certainly didn’t belong there totally alone. He got up and paced and sat down and then got up and paced again. This was ridiculous. This was really starting to piss him off. What was the point of hanging out in the bar? If he was going to pass some ‘test’ or other, he surely wasn’t going to do it there. He was going to do some exploring. He knew that mightn’t be the right thing to do either. Nobody wanted a club member who stuck his nose in where it didn’t belong, but equally, a guy who sat nervously in the bar being a nerd must be even less attractive as a potential new boy.
There was a long, darkened corridor that led out of the bar. Frank remembered walking down it on the way to the dining-room. Then it had seemed spacious and inviting. Today a dark threat hung over it. Still, Frank was ready to face dark threats. He entered the corridor. There were doors leading off it at intervals. Frank knocked on them, even called out weakly, ‘Anybody home?’ But he didn’t have the nerve to open any of the doors and look inside.
Frank was lost and bewildered. Last time he was here everything had been so friendly and welcoming. He’d wanted to be part of it all. So why did it now seem so bleak and forbidding? He felt not only the absence of people and conviviality, but also the presence of something truly sinister and threatening.
He walked to the end of the corridor, turned a corner, and thought he detected the smell of cooking. He couldn’t identify it completely. Was it cauliflower mingled with lime? But this was surely a good sign, a sign of life. If he could track down the kitchens he could surely find people, chefs hard at work preparing some of the hundreds of dishes that the Everlasting Club must get through in the course of a day.
But he didn’t find any kitchen, didn’t even know where to start looking. After a while the cooking smell was no longer detectable and he was left wondering if he’d imagined it. Then he thought he smelled petrol, but he knew that was impossible. Then he thought he heard footsteps, then he decided he was hallucinating.
He did however, at last, find the dining-room. He saw the two big panelled doors that he’d passed through on his way in to dinner. Then they had been open and somehow festive, but now they were firmly shut. Frank decided he’d had enough of jerking around. He’d had enough of being polite and knocking softly on doors. He was going in.
He turned one door handle, determined yet casual, as though there was nothing to it, certainly as though there could be nothing to fear on the other side. Then the door opened and he looked inside and he realised he could have been wrong.
The room looked at first as though it was as dark and dead as the rest of the building. The only light came from a couple of candles that flickered in candle-holders along the walls. The effect was disturbingly churchy. He wouldn’t have been surprised to hear organ music. He could just make out the refectory table at the room’s centre. He went in, not entirely certain why he did so, and in due course his eyes got used to the darkness and then he could see something on the table. It was white and it had curves and a moment later he knew it was a body; female, naked, and utterly still.
He got very close to the table and began to scrutinise the body, not that it required much scrutinising. He knew precisely whose body it was. He reached out as though to touch the bare right arm. He shivered. His mouth had no saliva. His legs had developed a tremble. He feared the worst, that the flesh might be stone cold, that it might be a corpse on that table. He drew back his hand. He couldn’t bring himself to touch and find out. He said very quietly, ‘Mary.’
He leaned over his wife’s body. He saw the soft, comfortable, familiar breasts, breasts with which he had become rather less familiar in the last few years, but it was the sort of thing you didn’t forget. He looked at the face. The eyes and lips were painted. The cheeks were dusted with powder. Then he thought, or was it perhaps just a flicker of the candlelight, he saw a gentle movement, a twitch at the corner of the mouth. He wanted to scream. And then, in an instant, the face was suddenly mobile, exploding in a fit of laughter that could no longer be contained. The body leapt into life, sat up, and Mary screeched, ‘Surprise! Surprise!’
The dining-room exploded into light and noise. A couple of dozen revellers, all men, all dressed in dinner jackets, burst through the door, popping champagne corks as they came. Streamers jetted through the air, balloons bounced up to the ceiling. There was cheering and barrages of laughter and Mary stood on the table and danced naked for a short while until someone threw her a robe.
Frank, speechless, gasping, utterly at sea, found himself at the centre of a raucous, backslapping huddle, having champagne poured over him by men he didn’t know. Somewhere, not far away, a Glen Miller record started to play very loudly, and everyone wanted to shake Frank’s hand. A posse of waiters arrived delivering platters and tureens of elaborately arranged food. Simultaneous renditions of ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’ and ‘Happy Birthday to You’ clashed with each other and with the Glen Miller record. Frank could only say, ‘But it’s not my birthday.’
Various toasts were drunk to Frank’s continuing good health, to his capacity for drink, to his business acumen, to his power as a sire. Mary ruffled his hair and gave him an unusually wet kiss. And then, and this was when Frank thought he might have lost his wits completely, Leo appeared bearing a tray of sausages. He looked drunk and hesitant, but nevertheless, he was very warm towards Frank and told the room that nobody had ever had a better employer.
‘Some surprise, eh, Frank?’ said Mary, but she was gone before he could answer. He wouldn’t have denied it. This certainly wasn’t the surprise party he’d been expecting.
Despite all the bonhomie and the frequent eruptions of good cheer, nobody was actually talking to Frank. He found this galling. It was supposed to be his party, after all. So he grabbed Radcliffe by the arm and pulled him into a corner. Radcliffe was not a man accustomed to being pulled into corners. Frank unhanded him hastily and smoothed the arm of his jacket, afraid he might have broken another club rule. Radcliffe turned a sedate ear towards Frank.
‘Look,’ said Frank, urgently, ‘I don’t understand this. Does this mean I’m one of you?’
Radcliffe looked at him slyly.
‘Do you think you know what it means to be one of us?’ he asked.
‘Well sure. That is, I think I do.’
‘I think not,’ said Radcliffe, ‘but certainly this is the occasion on which you are likely to find out.’
‘Oh well, fine then,’ said Frank, understanding nothing.
Radcliffe darted away. The dozens of questions stacking up in Frank’s mind would have to wait. He looked around for someone else to talk to; no good. Nobody seemed to want to talk to him, not even Leo; especially not Leo. Frank got himself another drink. At least the waiters weren’t avoiding him. It was pretty good champagne. He quickly drank a couple of glasses.
At which point Virgil and Butterworth burst into the room brandishing cigarette lighters and carrying what looked like giant cans of cooking oil, and Virgil yelled, ‘One false move and you’re all fried.’
Right from the beginning it had felt a little wrong to Virgil. He and Butterworth could hardly believe their luck in arriving at the Everlasting Club to find it dark and deserted. Their plan, Butterworth’s plan, was at best unsophisticated. He knew where the club’s tradesmen’s entrance was, so he and Virgil, dressed up as delivery men, had arrived carrying a few giant cans of cooking oil; supplies for the kitchen. But the cans did not contain cooking oil. They contained petrol. Once inside the club the idea was that they should run amok, shout a lot, cause panic, splash petrol on every available surface, wave cigarette lighters around, beat off anyone who tried to stop them, and finally ignite the petrol, causing flames to run through the club like some heavenly, avenging wave.
Even to Virgil’s less than clear mind this had seemed at first just a little extreme, but then again, in his present state he couldn’t think of any other way to rid the world of those sick dudes, so he’d decided to go with the flow.
Virgil thought, in so far as he was capable of thinking, that the plan’s main virtue was its element of surprise. Let’s face it, he told himself, when you’re sitting in your club, pie-eyed and stuffed full of food, you don’t expect two maniacs in workman’s overalls to appear out of nowhere and douse you in petrol. By the time any of the members had worked out what was happening he and Butterworth ought to be out of there, everyone being too concerned with fighting the fire to give chase.
That was the theory anyway. He could see that the plan contained a good deal of risk, and seemed to require considerable bravery on his part. He wasn’t at all sure that he possessed that bravery, but Butterworth assured him that God was on his side and that the necessary bravery would be provided. Virgil took his word for it.
Butterworth also offered the opinion that once they’d set the petrol alight, it would be up to God to decide how many, if any, of the Everlasting Club’s members survived. Virgil really wasn’t too sure about all this God stuff, but before long it was too late. Butterworth was off and running, and a still confused, still drifting Virgil was being dragged along in his turbulent slipstream.
Butterworth developed an icy, righteous calm that didn’t make Virgil feel very easy, nor was he impressed by the quantities of religious paraphernalia that Butterworth insisted on carrying with him. If God was really on their side, why did they need the lucky mascots?
There had been the problem of what to do with Kingsley and Rose. Butterworth felt he had imposed enough torture on Kingsley for the time being, and Rose, even he realised, had never been much more than a paid dupe. They were to be excused the worst excesses of Butterworth’s wrath, nevertheless they had to be got out of the way for a while. Butterworth’s solution was not one that Virgil would have expected from a good Christian. He stripped them naked, tied them very tightly together facing each other, then locked them in the boot of the Bentley. The car was then parked in a lonely lay-by somewhere outside Nottingham. Virgil almost protested that this was going too far, but he could tell that Butterworth was in no mood to listen to protests.
Thus Butterworth and Virgil arrived at the tradesmen’s entrance of the Everlasting Club, ready to put the plan into effect, and were unable to believe their luck in finding the place dark and deserted. But Virgil wasn’t sure it had much to do with luck. How could it possibly be that a club which had run successfully and continuously for over three hundred years, happened to have fallen into a lull on the very day that he and Butterworth had come to destroy it? He had the profound feeling that some counterplan was shaping itself around them and that they might be ambushed at any moment. But they had padded about the dim, empty corridors of the Everlasting Club, penetrating deep into its panelled offices, and into the library and the club rooms, leaving a generous trail of petrol as they went, and they had seen no signs of life, much less of ambush. At one point Virgil thought he heard footsteps and a voice he recognised, but he concluded it was only his imagination.
It had just begun to occur to Virgil that they might be able to get the job done and make their exit without meeting obstacles or people, without needing any God-given bravery. They would be able to turn the place into an inferno without putting themselves at any risk. Since the place was empty they would destroy the building without inflicting any casualties, and although that didn’t have the element of ritualistic destruction Butterworth wanted, Virgil would probably have settled for it.
They had distributed nearly all their petrol and were about to turn back when all hell broke loose. They were in one of the club rooms at the time. They heard footsteps outside, perfectly real this time. They heard a door open, a silence, and then shouts of ‘Surprise! Surprise!’ and the generalised sounds of guys whooping it up. Virgil remembered enough of the geography of the club to know that the commotion was coming from the dining-room. He pictured a group of people at the table, cannibals tucking into human flesh, gnawing on elbows and feet and thigh bones. Butterworth began to pray.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Virgil, his bravery quite absent. ‘Very, very fast.’
Butterworth started reluctantly to move, then stopped.
‘No,’ he said. ‘We don’t have to run any longer. Let’s face them.’
‘You’re crazy,’ said Virgil. ‘We can still get out of here without anybody seeing us. We can light the petrol as we go, and we’re home free.’
‘It’s not enough,’ said Butterworth. ‘I need to speak to them. They need to know why they’re going to die.’
Virgil knew this was madness. He wanted to run away. Yet, he couldn’t deny it, there was something actually persuasive and charismatic about Butterworth by now, and despite Virgil’s caution and cowardice he found himself agreeing with Butterworth.
Heads high, cigarette lighters in one hand, almost empty petrol cans in the other, they burst into the dining-room and Virgil yelled, ‘One false move and you’re all fried.’ And then, a moment later, he said, ‘Oh, hi Mom. Hi Dad. Hi Leo.’
Some time later they were in a high-ceilinged, echoless, velvet-curtained room somewhere deep in the Everlasting Club; Radcliffe, Butterworth, Leo, and the Marcel family – father, mother and son. All but Radcliffe sat in a semi-circle on tall, ladder-back chairs. Drinks had been served. The surprise party was over. Butterworth and Virgil had brought it to an abrupt conclusion. They had been persuaded to put away their cigarette lighters, Virgil quite easily since he was a good enough son not to want to see his mother and father go up in flames, Butterworth rather less easily. Even now, teams of staff were at work in the club trying to rid rooms and corridors of the smell and stain of petrol.
‘I don’t want to sound like a member of the master race,’ said Radcliffe, ‘but you really were incredibly stupid, Butterworth, to believe we literally eat one another at the Everlasting Club. This is England. We are decent, civilised men, and cannibalism is a metaphor. I’m rather surprised you didn’t grasp that, Butterworth. After all, your Bible is rather full of metaphors.’
Radcliffe stood before his audience. He was confident, in control. He had the voice of authority and command and of money.
‘Yes, the Everlasting Club is concerned with a form of perpetuation, but not the sort of perpetuation that comes from consuming the muscles and organs of human beings. That would be naïve. We are not naïve. None of us at the Everlasting Club is naïve. None of us believes in immortality, neither in the religious nor the physical sense. Merely to live forever seems to us a banal scheme, like dull science fiction.
‘We wish to perpetuate ourselves through actions, deeds, ideas, through wealth and a certain order of financial transaction. Call it power, call it manipulation. In the end we are businessmen, the superior sort, our appetites whetted by the complexities and the thrill of organisation and interaction. The “fast buck” does not interest us. Am I making myself clear?’
Radcliffe looked about the room, his line of vision deliberately above the heads of his listeners. Frank Marcel shifted his weight from one buttock to the other and said, ‘No you’re not. Not really. Like you could begin by explaining what I’m doing here. And what are my wife and son doing here? And Leo. Why the surprise party? Why here? How come Mary danced naked on the table?’
‘And what about me?’ Virgil demanded. ‘Why was I kidnapped by Rose?’
‘You weren’t kidnapped,’ said Radcliffe dismissively. ‘You simply received a little corporate hospitality.’
‘Oh sure.’
Radcliffe turned his back on the group. He was not there to discuss anything. He steeled himself, adopted an even more lordly posture, turned back to them, his face showing disdain. He was not to be argued with. He was not about to give up the floor.
He continued, ‘Are we then, drawing some apparently cheap comparison between cannibalism and capitalism? Well, yes and no. It is a dog eat dog world, and big fish certainly eat little fish. These two old saws describe the problem, but not unproblematically.
‘Imagine a pack of starving dogs, or of starving peasants if you prefer. The food runs out. At first they may survive on what little fat they have, but sooner or later, however much they resist, however unwilling they are, they will be forced to eat each other. Some therefore achieve a brief survival, but once their fellow dogs are eaten, the survivors are once again starving. Dog eats dog eats dog until finally there is only one dog left, a top dog, a top peasant, who has eaten himself into a corner and into oblivion, who must now perish, having nothing else on which to feed.
‘Now, we ask ourselves, does this sound like a persuasive or desirable economic model?’
Radcliffe paused as though to give the slower members of class a chance to raise their hands and answer the question. Virgil, his head clearer than for some time, thought he was about to explode with rage. This was even more crazy than all the other crazy bullshit he’d been through. A lecture on models of economic activity he did not need; not now, not ever.
Radcliffe said, ‘Well, no, I agree, it does not, because that kind of economic cannibalism destroys both the commodity and the market.’
He bowed his head slightly, as if ready to accept a little light applause, the conjurer who has performed a minor illusion and is now ready to move on to grander things.
‘So let us consider the food chain,’ said Radcliffe. ‘It is a necessary, continuing, self-perpetuating system. Big fish eat little fish but they do not destroy the whole population of minnows. They allow growth, development. They ensure the survival of some of the small fry.
‘The savage believes that by digesting the flesh of his brave but defeated adversary he will become stronger. He takes on the quality of his prey. Likewise, when a tribe eats its ancestors, it attempts to enfold and recycle those cultural traits which make it stronger, more fit.
‘We at the Everlasting Club believe in this too. And it is in this precise, limited and metaphoric sense that we are indeed cannibalistic.’
There were blank faces in the room, suspicions of mania, of darker revelations, of death and decay, of mayhem that might be far from metaphoric. Though not from Mary. She was serene, regal, self-possessed.
‘We know we cannot feed on ourselves. We look backwards to our traditions, and about us for fresh prey. We are hungry for new potential, for profit. We always need new blood. That is why you are here. That is why you have been delivered to us.’
At first it was not clear who Radcliffe was addressing. Virgil wondered if that word ‘delivery’ somehow meant he was still on the menu, that he was the fresh meat. Even Butterworth feared he might have made some terrible move from exorcist to sacrificial victim. Deliver us from evil. But slowly it became clear that Radcliffe was addressing only Frank.
‘We want to absorb you,’ Radcliffe said. ‘We want your business. We want the Golden Boy chain of restaurants. We want Trimalchio’s. We want Leo to be head chef at the Everlasting Club.’
‘Oh come on,’ said Virgil. Could this really be what it was all about? Could all these indirections have only brought him here, to a take-over bid for his father’s company from some shadowy English consortium?
Mary smiled radiantly, triumphantly, as though she was responsible, as if it was all her idea. Frank didn’t understand. He realised now that he hadn’t understood, or even known, Mary for years. He hadn’t a clue what was going on in her mind. The only thing he did know was that the bitch was enjoying this, enjoying his confusion and panic.
‘You know I don’t want to sell,’ said Frank.
‘Of course we know that,’ said Radcliffe. ‘Nobody wants to be swallowed up. But the cannibalism metaphor only goes so far, Frank. We aren’t, after all, going to carve you up. We aren’t going to chew you up and spit out the bones. We are going to pay you good money, the going rate and a little more. There will be generous consultancy fees for you, a seat on the board for Mary, a sinecure for Virgil if required. There will be expense accounts and free travel and company perks. We will make you a very rich man. It all makes economic sense.’
‘Look,’ said Frank, ‘it may come as a surprise to you that I’m not in this solely for the money. You’re not the first outfit that’s come to me trying to buy the Golden Boys. But frankly, I can’t think of one good reason for selling.’
‘I can,’ said Mary, ‘and you can too if you really put your mind to it.’
Frank Marcel had long experience of never really listening to his wife, of believing she could have nothing worthwhile to say. Now, however, something told him that he’d better listen to her. The prospect was new and unsettling. He was also unsettled by the way Mary and Radcliffe kept looking at each other. There was something intimate and secretive about it. It made him feel sick in his stomach.
‘Ultimately you’re going to sell to Radcliffe’s consortium,’ said Mary, ‘because I want you to.’
Frank was about to splutter something about that being the dumbest thing he’d heard anybody say in a very long time, but Mary didn’t give him the chance to interrupt.
‘I can see I’ll have to give you chapter and verse on this,’ she said. ‘The bottom line is that if you don’t sell to Radcliffe, I’ll sue you for divorce. Think about the consequences of that.’
‘Is that what this is about? You want a divorce?’
‘No, I don’t actually,’ she said. ‘It suits me pretty well to be married to you, but I want you to sell the Golden Boys to Radcliffe, and if you don’t I’ll file for divorce and take you for every penny you’ve got.
‘I know what you used to get up to on all those business trips. You weren’t the most faithful of husbands, Frank. And the courts would love to hear how vital I’ve been to your business success. I’ll get at least half your assets. The alimony I’ll demand will kill you. Then there’ll be massive legal costs, masses of bad publicity. I can ruin you, Frank. By the time I’m finished with you, you won’t be able to afford not to sell.
‘Also, of course, I happen to know what Leo used to get up to in the kitchen at Trimalchio’s. How much money do you think it might take to keep me quiet on that one?’
‘You’d do that to me?’ Frank asked. ‘Why?’
Mary gave a kind of shrug that said it didn’t really matter why, on the other hand she wasn’t going to spare his feelings by not telling him.
‘Is it you and Radcliffe?’ Frank demanded. ‘Are you an item or something?’
‘Oh Frank, don’t be so unimaginative.’
‘Then why?’
‘Because I hate you, Frank,’ she said.
Frank’s face looked soft and blank, like something partly defrosted.
‘You will be selling, Frank,’ Mary said.
‘On the bright side,’ said Radcliffe, ‘we’ll also make you a lif member of the Everlasting Club.’