The New Republic. Lionel Shriver

in my own country.”

      “In a truly pluralistic society, all people feel equally foreign and equally at home. You are not talking about being American, but about being white and in control. It is the same in Barba. The fascists in O Creme only want to stay in power—”

      “I’m with you in theory, Reinhold,” said Martha. “Still, nobody in crappy little Barba has power of any description to hang on to.”

      “They do now,” said Ordway. “Whole bloody Western world is up in arms about immigration in crappy little Barba. That’s power. Look at us: we live here, we file from here, we’re consumed with local politics. And we’d never have considered so much as a bargain package holiday to this filthy bog five years ago.”

      “That impresses you?” said Edgar.

      “It is impressive, innit?” Ordway’s standard middle-class London accent was decorated with lowbrow touches. Translate: white geeks from Long Island lacing their conversation with yo! and I hear dat! like the brothers in the ’hood.

      “The Sobs having murdered over two thousand people—that impresses you, too?” The journalistic penchant for calling members of the SOB the Sobs and their political counterparts in O Creme de Barbear Creamies had first jarred as swaggeringly familiar, but Edgar got a charge out of tossing off the jargon himself.

      “Kellogg, don’t be so earnest!” said Ordway. “There must be some bloke side of you that fancies their flash. The Sobs have Interpol, the FBI, the CIA, the Portuguese Army, and the local coppers combing every pera peluda peel of Barban rubbish, and nobody can find a trace of them. Even Creamies keep their hands clean. They get lifted, but the next week they’re back on the street when nothing sticks. Other than the author of that sodding autobiography, I Was an SOB—a load of bollocks, in my view—no one’s dug up a single bona fide member of that lot in five years. That’s impressive, mate.”

      “Only to little boys,” said Martha.

      “Already, half the schoolchildren in the States are Spanish-speaking,” Trudy was preaching fervently to Reinhold. “And kids grow up. They’re taking over!”

      “Majority status is no people’s right,” Glück insisted. “It is an accident, a lucky advantage. Like any advantage you want to hold on to it. But it is typical reasoning of privileged people to assume that just because you have something, ipso facto you deserve it. In truth, this ‘defense of borders’ is naked defense of self-interest—not of justice.”

      “I still think Verdade has a point,” said Trudy sulkily. “If I were Barban, I’d sure get peeved with hordes of North African Muslims overrunning my home. These immigrants don’t have any money—”

      “From what I have read, the Moroccans are much more industrious than the lazy native Iberians,” said Glück. “And Moroccans don’t blow up airplanes, either.”

      “Okay, the Creamies are extreme,” said Trudy. Recrossing her legs, she added slyly, “But you gotta admit: Tomás Verdade is pretty sexy.”

      “Violence puts an issue on the map,” Ordway was lecturing Edgar. “Sob tactics may not be pretty, but they’re sussed. No casualties, we’re not even having this conversation.”

      “I’d concede that targeting world powers is smart,” said Edgar, beginning to get in the swing. “Terrorizing has-been Portugal wouldn’t work. No one would give a shit.”

      “Yes,” Ordway droned wearily. “That observation has been made before.”

      Edgar flagged the jaded response. By nature he had both a good feel for the trite and a special aversion to it. He could pinpoint the exact instant when having a “bad hair day” was no longer funny.

      “Anyway,” said Ordway, “you’ll soon clue that your new profession is dull as ditch water unless someone gets hurt. I covered the Quebec referendum on secession: few punch-ups, a bit o’ shouting. Even my mum used the paper to line her kitty-litter box.”

      “News isn’t entertainment,” said Edgar.

      “News is exclusively entertainment,” said Martha, “according to Barrington.”

      “Ten minutes, girls and boyos!” Ordway exclaimed, checking his watch. “A record.”

       chapter 8

      Ninety-Nine Push-Ups and Cloudberry Shampoo

      At a pat on his shoulder, Edgar jolted upright. Nicola laughed. “You look like a vento head!” she teased. “Can I drive you home?”

      Unchivalrously, he accepted the lift. After Nicola went up to fetch her car keys, she met Edgar in the foyer with a significant glance. “Before I forget.” From the folds of her cloak, she withdrew an oversize brass skeleton key, its head cast with runes, as if it might open a chest of gold doubloons or a secret medieval torture chamber. The key was heavy, with a smaller, modern key attached, and so made quite a clatter when she dropped it on the flagstones. As she dived to scoop it up, Henry was walking up the stairs.

      “No, let me,” said Edgar, lunging for the set. “My keys,” he said to Henry, “from the Record. Dropped them. Clumsy of me. Must be tired.”

      Henry blinked. The key was distinctive. Something didn’t quite compute. Still Nicola looked, though whiter by a shade, relieved.

      “That was quick thinking, in the foyer,” said Nicola, as they pulled off in her Land Rover. “Thanks.”

      “You may be a dandy rug weaver,” said Edgar. “But when it comes to the art of deception, you suck.”

      She smiled, tightly. “I’m not sure if I should be offended by that, or not.”

      Edgar delivered a few slash-slash assessments of her other guests, but Nicola didn’t pick up, and Edgar feared that he’d just queered the goodwill of one of those if-you-can’t-say-anything-nice types.

      “I’m sorry that your new home won’t have been tidied,” she said. “It was left more or less au naturel. Not that Barrington was a slob—I mean, he was, but after these big, impromptu dos of his a few guests were always eager to stay and clear up. Some nights—mornings, rather—they actually fought over the Hoover. I dare say there were certain young ladies who’d have scoured his toilet bowl with their own toothbrushes.”

      “No, the real test,” Edgar mumbled, “is whether they’d use them after.”

      “Funny, some people go missing for weeks, and no one notices until a frightful smell starts leaking from their flats. But the alarm went out about Barrington in a matter of hours. He was meant to dine at Trudy’s that night. She’d made beef Wellington, of all things, an all-day-in-the-kitchen affair that Barrington had once mentioned in passing that he fancied. Foie gras, wild mushrooms, goodness knows what else. She insisted on making the puff pastry from scratch; the leaves came out a bit thick. Me, I find it’s often the simplest … Oh, never mind.

      “He was always late, of course, but he’d usually make an appearance. I’m afraid that Trudy’s having gone to so much bother would count for all too little, but there’s not that much to do here, and the rest of us were all at Trudy’s.”

      “More to the point, you were at Trudy’s.”

      Nicola ignored the insinuation. “By two a.m. she was hysterical. We all thought she was overreacting, upset about having made rather a hash of the beef (not to be unkind, but it came out a tad well-done, and there was no disguising that cutting the crust was hard work). We thought she was hurt that after all her talking up the dish he’d made other plans. The dear girl has made great capital since from her intuition that something ghastly was wrong. How she felt ‘a wash of cold air’ and ‘suddenly Cinzeiro felt empty.’ She claims she’ll never