Citizen

Nico spooned up the last scrapings of his favourite hangover cure: a lemon sorbet heavily laced with Italian bitters. His predatory eyes flicked between the guy he was talking to on the next stool, a Bolivian gigolo named Ramon, and the entrance. Nico had long cultivated the habit of noting every new arrival at the beach bar. The males were quickly assessed in terms of their influence or wealth; the females for any hint of availability; and both for their vulnerabilities, for the most advantageous angles of attack.

It was how Nico lived, how he funded the Jensen and the five-star hotels and vintage champagnes which were the keynotes of his life. With no capital or inherited standing in the world, he might superficially be bracketed with a pique-assiette like Ramon. Yet he stood apart from the hangers-on of his acquaintance, the gigolos, barflies and male models that infested the Riviera. For one thing, he looked different. With his puny physique and polecat face, he had to get by without the standard obvious good looks of those to whom freeloading came easy. Minus that confident jaw, lacking those soulful eyes, Nico compensated by growing a neat beard, wearing designer shades and working considerably harder, and with deeper insight, to access the playboy yachts, private tables and penthouse party circuits that all of them depended on. Nico would have it no other way. He was not, he considered, a Ramon, an expendable accessory, a pawn. He was a player. And he was clever.

His quick brain had even taken him to Harvard. The public Parisian school system prepared him well, but his father, proprietor of a modest food shop in the French capital’s 6ème Arrondissement, could never have afforded college in America. So Nico won a scholarship and took himself across the Atlantic to learn all about the drug habits and compulsive spending of the East Coast Preppy, the Texas Oilboy and the Jewish Princess. With this preliminary social research under his belt, Nico set forth.

He’d been recruited by Reitchel-Litvinoff, the trouble-shooting New York tax accountants, who found many uses for his chameleon social skills, undoubted numeracy and ability to bluff in six languages—including both American and British. For half a decade he shimmied from country to country on behalf of clients anxious to keep their wealth out of the clutches of the taxman. Whenever it was necessary to sidestep the electronic banking system, Nico was on hand. Here he picked up bearer bonds, title-deeds and attaché cases filled with large denomination bills. There he made discreet trades, deposits in numbered offshore accounts and deliveries at the clients’ Swiss chalets and Mustique beach houses.

Yet he featured nowhere in Reitchel-Litvinoff’s employment register. He was paid in cash, or in kind, and was impregnably deniable if things went wrong. Finally things did. The IRS picked Nico up on its radar, and suddenly the United States was an exclusion zone. Within a few days, his contact at Reitchel-Litvinoff no longer returned Nico’s increasingly desperate calls.

So he had landed, like a hopeful turtle, on the Côte d’Azur, and set about foraging for deals and new contacts. It was a perfect habitat for him. Where rich people took their pleasure they also did business, and Nico found the Riviera a natural base from which to haunt the pleasure domes of Europe. Shopping in Rue de Rivoli and New Bond Street, golf at the K Club, opera at La Scala and going ‘Banco’ at Monte Carlo’s baccarat tables. He convinced himself that he really was one of the high rollers. His skill in manipulating currency for other people frequently came in handy; often that currency was narcotic, equally often erotic; and so he negotiated his way through life, with money enough to pull on a hand-made Italian suit and drive a hand-made English car.

Ramon was half way through some story which involved one of the most beautiful girls in the world falling in love with his body. All of his stories were in this vein, and Nico was only half listening. His attention was caught by a party of Russians, who had clearly just come ashore from a private yacht. They were a couple of girls, chic and silkyblonde, a shiny-suited aide-de-camp and some kind of minder, all bossed by a thickset man with short grizzled hair and a pock-marked face. Apparently unable to speak more than a few words of French, the boss called for blinis and lemon vodka by jabbing the menu with a blunt forefinger. His hands looked like they’d spent most of their lives working on a pipeline in Siberia.

When the food arrived he ignored the little pancakes and shovelled quantities of caviar and sour cream directly into his mouth. Nico could hear his fellow countryman growling comments about the bar staff’s inability to speak Russian. From his accent and behaviour, Nico knew this was no White Russian émigré like himself. The man had emerged from Moscow in the Soviet era, and clearly not in a state of poverty.

The Bolivian was still droning on.

‘Di was becoming a nuisance. She was obsessed with me. And Pam didn’t like it. Pam was driving me crazy too. She just couldn’t get enough of me and that loser of a boyfriend was always on the phone. She’s got no brain, you know. I can’t stick these girls with no brain, I don’t care who they are.’

Nico produced a thin smile, nodded in agreement, slid from the stool and patted Ramon lightly on the shoulder.

‘Back in a minute, Ramon,’ he said.

Then he crossed to the Russians’ table, bowing slightly from the waist as the boss-man turned to him. ‘I wonder if I might be of service to a fellow countryman,’ Nico said smoothly.

3 (#ulink_b5397293-bc38-5e90-a57c-32b40cdcf873)

Sam’s family lived in a cottage within the confines of a stud farm. It was among the most prosperous in the area. This was not one of the thousands of rackety micro-studs that litter the Irish hinterland, the kind of small farm where, just for the love and romance of it, a couple of mares would share the grass and the outbuildings with a dairy herd or a couple of breeding sows. The enterprise Sam’s father worked for was owned by rich people in Dublin. They expected the stud’s progeny to be the best, and to win Grade One races from Ascot and Longchamp to Happy Valley and Churchill Downs. And to generate big returns from yearling sales. The stud itself was a demesne of beautifully maintained, white-railed paddocks, shaded by huge chestnut trees and linked via a network of sandy bridleways to various functional and fanatically well ordered buildings: the boxes, covering sheds, tack-rooms and feed stores.

His father Pat, the stud groom, was a wiry countryman with a broken nose that whistled when he exerted himself. He had no intention of this being a summer holiday for his nephew. He expected Tipper to make himself useful; sweeping out barns and stables and feeding horses. It was all new to the boy. The first week felt like a lot like hard work, but as soon as he was allowed to get off the end of a broom and handle the horses Tipper began to enjoy himself.

A couple of weeks into his stay, Tipper came in for his tea and found Sam alone.

‘Where’s your Da and Ma gone to?’ he asked.

‘Gone off in a hurry to Dublin.’

‘What for?’

Sam shrugged. ‘Don’t know. They didn’t say.’

Tipper found out why later in the evening. The stud manager, a remote figure called Mr Power, whom the boys rarely spoke to, sent word for Tipper to come up to the house.

‘I have something to tell you,’ he said in an unnaturally hollow voice when Tipper presented himself. ‘It’s about your mother.’

‘Oh, right! What about her? Is she okay?’

Without immediately replying, Mr Power ushered Tipper into the hall of his house, a large gloomy space hung with racing prints and photographs of horses. He carefully shut the door behind the boy, then turned to face him. Tipper felt uncomfortable in this strange environment.

‘No, I’m afraid that’s the point. She is not okay. As a matter of fact.’

Tipper could tell he was having trouble spitting it out, whatever it was. He waited silently.

‘The thing is,’ Mr Power went on, ‘I’ve had a phone call from your uncle who went up to Dublin with your aunt this morning. They went to the hospital, and the thing is, she’s died, Tipper. I’m sorry.’

Tipper didn’t take this in. He was confused. None of it was making sense.

‘Who’s died? My aunt? I don’t get it.’

‘No, not your aunt. Your mother. Your mother’s died, son. She never got over the operation. She was beyond help, apparently.’

Slowly, like water seeping into a sinking boat, Tipper grasped what Mr Power was saying. His Ma was dead. His Ma. He would never see her alive again.

Tipper didn’t speak or move, but stared at Mr Power transfixed. Then after a few moments he found the ability to walk, and brushed past the stud manager. He opened the front door and quietly closed it behind him. He hoped Mr Power wouldn’t come after him. He hurled himself down the steps and started running, pelting down the drive that stretched to the road. He pounded across the tarmac, leapt a stone wall and plunged into the small wood on the other side. It was hard fighting his way through the undergrowth, but he didn’t think about it. At last he found a small clearing and his flight ended. He needed to be by himself. He didn’t even want to see Sam. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. He didn’t want to see anyone.

In his misery he sat on a fallen bough and propped his elbows on his knees. His emotions were randomly churning around inside him. It was incomprehensible that he’d never see his mother again. Ever. He hadn’t said good-bye to her. He’d just walked out of the door without a care in the world. What had she thought about that? Why hadn’t he taken more notice? Why hadn’t he seen that she was ill? What could he have done? He would never again see Ma. Never pinch another bouquet of flowers from the cemetery to give her. Never eat her rashers and beans, or watch the English soaps with her. These things seemed enormously important. They were a part of his life that had all of a sudden been detonated and blown away.

His eyes were hot and throbbing. He stared at the ground; it was covered with decayed leaves and rabbit droppings. Now his mind was empty of thought. He totally lost track of time. He had no idea how long he’d been there when he realized that he was freezing cold and it was nearly dark. He thought about Sam. He’d have to talk to him about Ma; it was the last thing he’d want to do. He couldn’t bear the thought of talking to anyone about her. Tears started streaming down his cheeks again. Then he got up, wiped his cheeks and brushed his backside. He’d never forget Ma, that wouldn’t change. But everything else had. He just had no idea how he was going to cope. No idea what was going to happen to him.

The next month of Tipper’s life was shrouded in a dark cloud of misery. He couldn’t get his mother out of his mind. Why had he been denied the chance to say good-bye to her? Maybe if he had it wouldn’t have felt so bad. He surprised himself by wanting to talk to Sam incessantly about her. Sam was brilliant. He wasn’t embarrassed like Tipper thought he’d be. He asked Tipper all about her and Tipper told him. He loved telling him and he was so grateful to Sam for listening. His uncle and aunt just clammed up and carried on as if nothing had happened. But when Tipper was on his own a black cloud descended on him.

Tipper threw himself into the work on the stud. He had nothing else. He listened to Uncle Pat who taught him that the thoroughbred horse is a manmade creature, the result of three centuries of carefully selected breeding. With a set of rules worked out in the eighteenth century and never varied since. The racecourse rule demanded that all horses are proven racers, or at least the offspring of proven racers. The intercourse rule ensures that every mating is a true one, witnessed, recorded and verifiable. Artificial insemination is abominated in this world, unlike in cattle breeding. The thoroughbred stud is an establishment dedicated to natural procreation as nature intended.

Tipper loved working with the foals, which at this time of year meant getting them to walk properly on a leading rein. He chatted away to them about his Ma as he walked them up and down the sandy lanes and somehow felt his soul was restored in the process.

‘Just watch their front legs, son,’ Uncle Pat told him. ‘A foal’s not like a grown horse, who kicks behind. It’s the front legs that are most dangerous in a foal.’

Tipper looked at the youngster he was leading, as if to say, you wouldn’t want to hurt me, now would you? And it seemed he didn’t. Tipper was confident, comfortable in his handling of the foals, and they responded. Uncle Pat was impressed by his nephew’s natural instinct.

‘He’s got a gift with these foals,’ he informed Mr Power. ‘But he just doesn’t know it yet. He’ll be grand.’

Tipper’s favourite foal was a high-strung little filly with an unusual dark reddish, almost mahogany coloured coat. When he had time on his hands and no-one was about Tipper would take her into one of the barns, sliding shut the big door before turning her loose. Usually a foal at this stage of its development is nervous of anyone that doesn’t smell of its mother, and flighty to catch. Red had always been especially neurotic and Tipper set himself the task of making her biddable. He got down on his hands and knees, reckoning that foals were no different from children—intimidated by anyone that loomed over them. Little by little Red came nearer, smelling his hand, chewing his coat, and in that way the two of them got to know each other. Next he took a long rope and attached it to a halter loosely hanging round her nose and neck. If she wanted to back off, he let her, but he would then tease her in again, like an angler playing a fish, rubbing her neck before loosening the line once more. Gradually Tipper was mastering Red, but without ever imposing on her or making demands. Her education proceeded only as fast as she herself wanted.

Red remained fearful when out in the open, and that was almost her undoing one afternoon, when Tipper and Sam were left on their own in charge of the paddocks.

‘Lads, be sure to get the foals in if the rain comes,’ Uncle Pat had told them.

The storm came in suddenly on a southerly wind. The sun was still shining but the sky in the south was black. The wind stiffened, tossing straw and sacking around the yard. At the first almighty clap of thunder the boys rushed out carrying ropes to bring in the foals. As soon as they opened the gate and began calling, the herd walked obediently towards them. All of them, that is, except Red, who hung back. They decided to bring in the others and come back for Red. But as they unhooked the gate a second time, another thunderclap split the air and immediately the frightened foal took off, careering away from them towards the far end of the paddock, where she collided with a railing post. She staggered back and hopped unnaturally on three legs. The fourth was streaming blood.

‘Jesus, Sam, will you look at that?’ shouted Tipper. ‘There’s blood pouring out of her.’ The rain was now hosing down and they were getting soaked.

Sam yanked the gate shut behind him and the boys ran over to investigate. Red shied and tried to hop away as they approached. Tipper held Sam back.

‘Stop,’ he said. ‘She’s dead scared. She might hurt herself more.’

Sam looked terrified himself. He was wiping the rain off his face. The consequences if anything should happen to this valuable filly would be dire.

‘Christ on a bike, we’re in the shite!’ he said. ‘Is the leg broken or what?’