Capital

Schwarzenegger, is asked what is the greatest happiness in life, and he answers: ‘To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.’ That was Roger ’s favourite line in all cinema.
    ‘He’s well,’ she said, her eyes flicking sideways towards her husband. A waitress arrived with more Taittinger, and they all took refills. Then a gong was sounded, and someone called out, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, dinner is served.’
    After the main course, a few things were auctioned. One of the prizes was supposed to be given away by Freddy Kamo, the African footballer who lived in Pepys Road – the charity, it turned out, was to do with Africa and clean drinking water in villages. His club had had a certain amount of tabloid newspaper trouble over players’ sex lives, and as part of a PR counter- offensive was encouraging its players to do token charitable activities. Roger had been keen to see the African boy – his working hours were such that he’d never seen Freddy in the street. But Freddy had been injured a few days before and instead his prize was given away by a weaselly man called Michael Lipton-Miller, representing the club.
    ‘That was a little disappointing,’ said Lothar when Mickey sat down.
    Looking back on the evening, Roger realised that there was no single definitive moment when he realised he had fallen in love with Matya. It was something to do with the way she looked in his colleagues’ eyes and it was not just her looks – though it had to be admitted that her long, very dark, only just off-black hair, worn down tonight over her vivid jade gown, emphasising her height and her shapeliness and her slightly too large, meaning exactly perfect, bum – well, Roger would be the last person to say that her looks weren’t an important factor. He would defend those looks to the end; he wouldn’t hear a word against them. He would pick up the standard for those looks and charge towards the foe, axe swinging, ready to die, ready to kill, ready for . . . Roger didn’t follow through on the thought. Let the record show merely that he fancied Matya. But the thing which had made him fall for her, fall properly, was the way she seemed so calm and so quiet and so sad. Surrounded by noisy bankers showing off, and their variously pushy or beady or anxious or competitive wives, she seemed to be from somewhere else; a place where people carried their own burdens; a grander and realer and more honourable place. Roger didn’t know that Matya spent a lot of that evening thinking about home, but he could tell that she was thinking about something, and it was that other thing which, for him, did it. She was like a countess; and that became his private, only-to-himself nickname for her, the countess. His countess.
    Roger had taken the precaution of booking a taxi for half past midnight. He knew too well how a scrum of pissed City types could fight over late-night cabs. He had had enough to drink to spend the ride home thinking about how nice it would be to take her straight to bed and give her the seeing-to of her life, her hair spread over the pillow, face-up, then face-down, then face-up again . . . then roses and champagne in the morning, and start all over again the next day. Following this train of thought, he found himself with a huge erection as the car turned into the corner of their street, and had to fumble, pretending to look for his wallet, to give it a chance to subside, while he tried to think about things other than how good she would look in nothing but her knickers. So he thought about work for a few moments – something he found himself increasingly reluctant to do, these days, especially when he was actually at work, but a few seconds contemplating the prospect of collating the weekly figures to run past Lothar, and bingo, no erection.
    Roger got out of the cab, handed the driver three twenty-pound notes, and gave him Matya’s address. He didn’t trust himself to kiss her goodnight.
    ‘I hope you had a nice time,’ he said through the open window as the cab rattled in the otherwise silent street.
    ‘It was wonderful,’ said Matya.
    ‘See you tomorrow,’ said Roger, who in fact probably wouldn’t – he would be gone before she arrived and back after she had left. Then he went upstairs, got into bed beside his deeply sleeping wife, and lay awake for a long time.

60
     
     
    Everyone at Pinker Lloyd was at work by eight in the morning. Many were