Stockholm

Circa: August 2010

In the pub, during the dinner parties, I hear grumbles about the state of the infrastructure but to me, perhaps because of so many years living in Tanzania the modern stuff works pretty swish. This train whisked us all from the country side to the centre of the capital in less than an hour and once there it was a float through the home crowds to the bar she had suggested. A fish place. "I hope you will like it"

I still feel a rush when these jaunts come up. The same hope that something might happen that was there from the first Fridays out in London, stuffed with a week’s cash wages, in London 1978. Mostly nothing happened except the wages got spent on futile endeavours until that chance encounter one Saturday lunch time in Holland park. Was it by chance? I wonder in my more anxious moments whether any of these encounters these past thirty years have been by chance.

Waiting for the train my face tingled. The excitement made it seem that my skin had tightened and removed for a moment all my old jowly. The platform was crowded for the 17.25. The ticket is not cheap so the grumbles say. Who and why buys these expensive train tickets?  I speculated on the exciting things that the other passengers might be off to do in town. “Town, lets meet in the town I like the buzz”

“I hope you like the place. It has a no booking policy and gets quite crowded. So if you get there first grab a table”

Do the other passengers know precisely what they are going to do?

I was on the way to meet someone to discuss something, part of a deal I know very little about except the part I have been employed to play. And not that much about my part either: “you can cope Michael? You look like the kind of chap who can cope. That is what your CV said. I am sure you will, just go for it. Use your experience, Can you cope?”

Would she know more? I expected her to have a smooth confidence to go with the public relations and marketing skills. These ladies are tough professionals. It does not imply that she knows more than her part.

I was ten minutes early. I carry the expectation of an Englishman meaning that I should be early. It is a time to compose, to be sure that in a crowded come and go eatery, in a capital I have not been to for quite some time there is no one there I recognise.

I looked, she may be early: she could be. I wondered foolishly if there would be a mutual recognition. She might be blond, in Stockholm. I will look the same as I have for many years, it has been a long time since I shaved off my moustache. "You have a lived in face. Its nice. Down mouthed and slightly disappointed like a Basset hound"

The head waiter, an Australian, asked me.

 “ Two?”

“I am expecting someone. It will be two. But you never know. One can be stood up”.

“I should grab a table, we get pretty busy, have a beer, waiting will be cool. When are you expecting your companion?” In ten minutes.

I ordered a bottle of becks, a small expensive bottle which I could drink in a gulp.

 The text comes:

“Just left the office I will be there in ten, get a table if you get there first”

Her professional competence I could never match not even in the heyday.

The mobile number was the same as she used for to arrange the meeting. An ordinary number used for social purposes which had been in my address book for more than three years. I had expected a new number and was annoyed with myself for carrying old baggage. There had been that reassuring phone call “Michael, everything we do is legal, don’t you ever you forget that, these days it is all commerce. You are home, safe. Enjoy life, don’t worry.”

At seven exactly she was there. I saw her peer in. I had, old habits turned in, head down a pate where once there were curls. She wore a woman’s work suit cut tight, no blond, but orange shoes.

“I have orange shoes, Amsterdam shoes. For Holland. How is Elena?  You told me you have been in contact recently? Shall we have a drink, wine? White? I like red a lot these days but this is fish. A bottle? Let’s do it”

She made a fuss about the wine asking the waiter if she could try a glass. He agreed without demur. She chose the second. She asked if I like oysters- “I know you do. I do too but not the slimy green ones.” She asked the waiter about that too, he said our dozen would be as fresh and white as…..

She poured the first glass of wine, “Good to see you” her full lips shone as she set the glass down, communion wine, but the level in her glass did not diminish. A whole bottle just for me! Twenty minutes of talking, then food came; there would be no waiters for a while. The music noise had just been turned up, the time to hustle the customers through or allow for conversations that cannot be overheard. Her opener:

“You probably know a lot more about this business than I do….

Two weeks later the contract paid from a company identified by initials, registered in Oxford, with a deduction for National Insurance, (so my efforts to exist had been accepted), with no tax deductions and no employer PAYE reference. I was pleased about that. I smiled.

Two weeks later I went to Oxford to play bridge. I took the Oxford Tube from Notting Hill where a young posh student type carrying an umbrella asked me if I had a lighter for his raffishly held cigarette. I got off at the Park and Ride where I was greeted with a wave, “Great to see you” and driven to a house in a suburban street. Three ladies and I played eight hands and during this time I was given one and half glasses of wine. The bridge ended rather abruptly, “I think that is enough if you don’t mind”. We went quickly to “so nice to have met you” and looking for coats in the hallway. One of the ladies told me she was a widow and missed her grandchildren living in Australia. Another had two children at university, one starting this year. The other was my host.

We drove home to a bungalow near Oxford I have stayed overnight, to use a phrase of theirs, quite a few times. She says she owns it, she has always been there when I visit, but there are signs the place is never used except for this sort of over-night. The spare room is made up, but sparsely, there is washing up left  in the sink, packet cheese in the fridge, but always in the hallway a wheeled travel bag, closed, already packed, so I supposed. I imagined a cleaning lady coming to set it up again once the cars has gone.

My bridge partner chats nicely in the car, a “what have you been up to” kind of chat. She wears a lot of layers, country style, and put another one on when we get home: “are you cold, I have not put the heating on”

“Would you like some tea or coffee?”  I gruntled that they seem to have taken my declaration that I do not drink “as much these days” too much at face value.  

I went to fish out the tea bag she had dumped ready to stew institution style in a cup fresh from the cupboard. A brandy in a giant goblet would have been better.

 She made herself instant coffee. Her blond hair still kept long was tied back tightly. We stayed in the kitchen.

“My visa and passport are back so I have to go to Heathrow at eleven o clock tomorrow morning. So I need to drop you back at the Park and Ride by ten in the morning”

Ok. What do you say to that?

“How will you get to Heathrow?”

She ignored for a moment that stupid, unprofessional question.

“By taxi” A smile, a memory,

“So we do not have much time before it is time to sleep". She paused, her silence seemed a little weary, but more likely it was a moment for composure.  "So tell me, now, from A to Z about your trip to Stockholm”

“Stockholm, a small town, is the capital of Sweden.”  I began. She watched silent, bored perhaps, stifles a yawn. Her eyes are sharp, but straight at mine and she does not comment only listens. She has been thirty years in the poverty industry and can listen easily for two hours.