‘The plumage is a wonder to behold . . . ’| Extract from Ghosting

Jennie Erdal

So strange and exotic is he that he could be a rare tropical bird that you might never come face to face with, even in a lifetime spent in the rain forest. The plumage is a wonder to behold: a large sapphire in the lapel of a bold striped suit, a vivid silk tie so bright that it dazzles, and when he flaps his wings the lining of his jacket glints and glistens like a prism. He sees that I am startled and he smiles. He takes my hand in his and lays it on the silk lining. You want to touch? Go on, touch! It’s best Chinese silk. I have only the best.

It is a lot to take in all at once. Under his suit he wears one pink sock, one green, two gold watches on his right arm, a platinum watch on his left, and on his fingers a collection of jewels: rubies, emeralds, diamonds. This is the jungle bird in human form – flamboyant, exaggerated, ornate – a creature whose baroque splendour surely has to be part of the male mating display. And yet the brightness of the eyes and the set of the smile give him an amused look that suggests a degree of self-parody. A touch of the court jester perhaps? Only perhaps, for nothing is yet sure. The head is large, in keeping with the frame, and the ears look as if they might have been an exuberant afterthought. The hair, dark and wiry, seems to be a separate entity, a thing apart. It perches on top like an eagle’s nest.

It is a Saturday morning in 1981 and I have travelled from my home in Scotland to an address in Mayfair. A uniformed porter opens the door of my taxi and ushers me inside. He asks me to take a seat while he telephones to announce my arrival. He presses a button to call the lift and, with a touch of his cap, sends me on my way. As the lift doors open, the bird of paradise is already standing there in all his finery. I had little idea of what to expect, but the reality is a good deal odder than anything I might have imagined. A psychedelic experience without the need of drugs.

His demeanour conveys generosity and impeccable courtesy. His eyes sparkle like precious stones. His hands are large and beautiful, and they feel so soft that they seem quite new and unused. But his handshake is not the limp, wishy-washy how-do-you-do of an Englishman; it is a firm and cordial clasp, like a lingering embrace. His voice is velvet and beguilingly accented, and it is speaking now in short unfinished bursts, gentle, apologetic, cajoling, pampering. Come . . . come . . . please . . . only one minute . . . be so kind . . . because the telephone . . . it happens always. His body is never still but moves to the rhythm and cadences of his speech pattern. He does a low salaam and beckons me to follow, like a Bedouin prince inviting an honoured guest to his tent. Please . . . sit . . . two minutes . . . then I’m back . . . you’re very kind. He glides off, leaving behind eastern scents – musk, saffron, sandalwood.

The walls of the tent are festooned with rugs, and on the floor there are more rugs with small exquisitely carved tables and dark-wood chests on top. More Marrakesh than Mayfair, it seems to me, though I am not familiar with either. The decoration is rich but not oppressive, the lines are clean and disciplined. There is no evidence of normal day-to-day living, none of the randomness of ordinary clutter. And no photographs, just a picture of a tiger in the corner by the door. On one of the chests – it could be rosewood inlaid with mother-of-pearl – there is a careful arrangement of antique ivory bracelets. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to achieve the desired effect. He glides back in. Sorry . . . sorry . . . can you come now . . . we will go quickly . . . the chauffeur is downstairs. He hurries off down the long corridor, leaving behind a vapour trail of blandishments. I follow him, eyes down, counting the kelims as I go. It feels like an absurd passage in a dream.

Out on the pavement, the chauffeur is standing beside a silver Rolls Royce, holding the door open for us to get into the back seat. I have never been in a Rolls Royce before, but find myself behaving as if it is a common occurrence. I have no idea why I am pretending. It certainly does not occur to me to be myself. I give a nod to the chauffeur, decidedly de haut en bas, and sink into the plush leather like Lady Muck.

We are on our way to Oxford, the dazzling publisher and I, to visit a woman as old as the century. It has the feel of an adventure, the beginning of something.

Anything counting as a significant happening usually involves the chance occurrence of a number of events. Each event means nothing in isolation, or so it seems at the time, but taken together and viewed from the ringside seat that is given to us by hindsight, each turns out to have played a part in what Raymond Chandler liked to call the Start of Something Big. The particular events that led to my journey from London to Oxford in the back of a Rolls Royce that Saturday morning in 1981 were something of a rag-bag. Here is a selection from the rag-bag:

the study of Russian language and literature
an exhibition at an art gallery in St Andrews
the birth of babies (three)
the undertaking of a translation
visits to Oxford to look at paintings
a commission from a London publishing house
a Russian artist’s visit to Palestine in 1924.

The longer version of events is that in the early seventies I spent four years at university reading Russian and philosophy. My undergraduate thesis was a study of the poet and novelist Boris Pasternak. When the University of St Andrews opened a new art gallery with an exhibition of the works of Leonid Pasternak, father of Boris, I was asked to write a profile of the artist for the exhibition catalogue. The research for this involved reading Pasternak’s memoirs in Russian and consulting with the artist’s two daughters, Josephine and Lydia. After the exhibition they encouraged me to translate their father’s memoirs but, since I had two small children and a third on the way, it seemed an impossible undertaking. When the third child was born it was even more impossible, but by then I knew that if I was going to be a fit mother I needed also to do something that was not mothering. Translation seemed to offer a solution.

[ . . . ]

During the journey I heard a lot about other successes – business deals, theatrical productions, film ventures, publishing coups. The list was mesmerizing and seemingly without end. He talked quickly, with alarming enthusiasm, an unEnglish fanaticism, hardly pausing to breathe, the words tumbling over one another. There was a passion and an urgency in everything he said, and occasionally the suggestion of an intimacy, as if he were sharing a terrible family secret. He constantly touched my arm as he talked, sometimes cuffing it with the back of his hand or patting it gently, sometimes clutching it suddenly as if to prevent a fall, mostly holding it for a few seconds in his strong grip. His voice ranged over two octaves at least, the pitch in perfect equilibrium with the level of emotion. It was another breathtaking performance.

And now it was my turn to be seduced. During the journey I had said very little – there was no need – but as we neared London he started asking about my life and what had led to my translating Pasternak’s memoirs. He listened intently and then surprised me by saying that he had always wanted to publish foreign language books and that I must come to work in his publishing company and manage the Russian list. There had to be a catch. If you have three children under five it is possible to believe that you will never work again, that you will never read anything other than bedtime stories. And yet here I was being offered an interesting, brain-alive job, working from home in my own time, as much as I could manage to fit in with the children. There was no catch, at least none I could see. The salary would be £5,000 plus expenses – ‘All my girls start on £5,000 a year, isn’t it?’ – and I was to begin straightaway. I was to travel from Scotland to attend editorial meetings, work for a day or two a month in the London offices, and the rest of the time I could be at home and keep in touch by telephone. It seemed too good to be true. We shook hands on it in the back of the Roller.

He then told the chauffeur to take a detour to his offices where he would show me round.

‘You are going to enjoy working for me. I have a good feeling about it. My motto is when we work, we work, and when we play, we play. That way everybody is happy, isn’t it?’ As we climbed the stairs to the top of the building I pondered his interesting use of the ‘isn’t it?’ tag. There are terrible complications in the English language when it comes to inviting someone to agree with you or to confirm what you’ve just said. Most languages make do with a one-size-fits-all solution along the lines of n’est-ce pas? or ¿no verdad? or nicht wahr? But in English there is no single phrase that can be used on all occasions to mean ‘isn’t that so?’ And so the unsuspecting are ensnared by opting for a simple isn’t it? When actually what is needed is an aren’t they? or a didn’t she? or a can you? It hardly seems fair.