The Buddha of Brewer Street

ONE

Westminster, some forty years later

Perhaps it had something to do with the ley lines, Goodfellowe wondered. Two main sets of them were supposed to converge at Westminster, directly beneath the altar of the Abbey, in fact, where once had stood a Druid temple. The Michael Ley and the Mary Ley, male and female, all options covered and chaos guaranteed. Avenues of prehistoric energy that gave this place its unusual intensity – and that edge of insanity.

He was standing barely a hundred yards from the supposed confluence of the ley lines, in the Cholmondeley Room (pronounced Chumley, sometimes through the nose), which stood at the back of the House of Lords. He’d never had much liking for diplomatic receptions even though they were an inescapable part of the duties required of Her Britannic Majesty’s Minister for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. Sod the lot of ’em. Sod ’em all! Being nice to foreigners didn’t figure prominently on his Christmas shopping list but perhaps that’s why the Prime Minister regarded him so highly. At least until tomorrow afternoon. (He’d have arranged the announcement for the morning, except the Evening Standard had recently done him a disservice and he didn’t fancy giving them an exclusive. A tiny spite, not much of a revenge, but the best he could run to at a time like this.) The letter was already signed and sealed, waiting only to be taken by messenger the few yards that separated the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from the source of power at 10 Downing Street. It would take the messenger less than three minutes in the morning. And that would be that. Close of innings. The end. Like some desperate Indian academic qualification. Thomas Goodfellowe. MP, BA University of Marshwood (Failed).

His feelings of distaste, at first generalized and unfocused, now took on physical form. Lucretia – he didn’t know her real name and didn’t care to know, but the name fitted like a corset – Lucretia had managed to get her elbow into his stomach and was using it like a jemmy to force herself between him and his companion, a fine-featured man in his early forties who possessed the glossiest of ebony faces. Lucretia was of a similar age but the gloss was evidently applied.

‘I am delighted to meet you,’ she offered in a narrow voice that matched her artificially pinched waist, addressing the black man. Dig. She slid in the jemmy a few more inches. ‘I do so enjoy such occasions. The opportunity to meet interesting new people?’

She now had her back fully towards Goodfellowe. He wasn’t used to being ignored, usually he was a centre of attention, but maybe his reclusive body language betrayed him tonight. Anyway, he’d better get used to it. Dig. Her buttock was now brushing against him, forcing him back; he could almost feel what was left of her ovaries rattling. Yes, definitely the ley lines, he concluded.

Her hand was clamped firmly onto the black man’s sleeve in a manner that implied – no, screamed – it would take either a court injunction or unrestrained coitus to effect his release. There was no doubting Lucretia’s preference. ‘And tell me, is it hot back home?’

‘Mild. For the time of year,’ he replied, attempting a noncommittal smile. His words bore only the slightest trace of an accent. Probably an educated African, she decided.

‘I have such a fascination for the Third World.’ Dig. Dig. The parting of the ways between Goodfellowe and his companion was clearly intended to be permanent. ‘And of course for its people. Such fascinating cultures, such tremendous challenges. Tell me, Your Excellency, is there much poverty in your country?’

His eyes widened. They caught Goodfellowe’s only briefly before returning to Lucretia. ‘A crushing issue, where I come from,’ he admitted. His tone implied it was all but a matter of mass starvation. Her fingers made their way from the sleeve to his hand in sympathy. They were very large hands, she noticed, powerful, but soft for a man of his age. Educated hands, she hoped, with just the necessary touch of native roughness.

‘And tell me, where is it that you come from? No, let me guess, do,’ she insisted. ‘But you must give me a clue. Does your country play cricket?’

‘Candidly, not as well as it might. The world does not truly regard us as a great cricketing nation,’ he acknowledged with remorse, as though she was ripping his conscience bare. ‘Although personally I have always taken the sport very seriously.’

‘Then it is definitely not Caribbean,’ she declared in triumph. Her first instincts were right. African. And she was a woman of exceedingly strong instincts. ‘So tell me, you are the High Commissioner for which country? Nigeria? Ghana?’

‘No, Cricklewood.’

‘Where?’

‘I come from Cricklewood, madam. In North London.’

‘But Cricklewood doesn’t have a … You’re not a High Commissioner?’

‘No.’

‘Then you are …?’ She was unable to find the social courage to finish the sentence.

‘Matthew O’Reilly, madam. A government driver. I drive Mr Goodfellowe here. Have done for years.’ Matthew beamed and Lucretia, on the brink of devastation, turned.

‘Mr … Goodfellowe?’ At last, he existed. She withdrew her hand rapidly from Matthew’s and considered offering it to Goodfellowe, but could find no appropriate words and instead waved it in the general direction of the throng. ‘Such interesting people,’ she declaimed, and without a further word launched herself into their midst.

‘I do hope the bloody cricket improves.’ Matthew smiled in her wake.

‘You could have kept up the pretence. She is obviously a serious collector of …’

‘Colonial conquests?’

‘High Commissioners. Men of elevated position.’

‘Then both of us are safe.’ Matthew chuckled. He examined Goodfellowe more critically. ‘You ought to go mix.’

‘Do I look as if I want to mix?’

Matthew shook his head.

‘Then you’ll have to do, O’Reilly.’

‘Sure thing, bwana,’ Matthew joked, but it fell on stone. ‘So, how is it on the western front?’ he enquired, picking up the threads of their conversation.

Goodfellowe considered the point. ‘Splendid,’ he suggested, but the eyes remained cold and untouched.

‘Bad as that, eh?’

The drowning of Goodfellowe’s teenage son Stevie in a holiday accident seven months earlier had been the cause of genuine sympathy in Westminster. Colleagues could see the loneliness in Goodfellowe’s features; those who knew him better could also detect the flecks of guilt. And it had got no better.

‘How’s the family?’ Matthew enquired quietly.

Matthew had driven Goodfellowe and his wife, Elinor, and their daughter Sam to the church, not just as a close work colleague but also as a friend. He had seen the bewilderment in young Sam’s eyes and noted with concern the vacant, almost detached look in Elinor’s, as though the funeral was merely another tedious official obligation that got in the way of all the private joys she would once again share with Stevie as soon as she returned home. When her longest day was over and at last she had walked back through her front door, past his new jacket that still hung on the rack and the polished boots that still waited for the new school term, she had taken herself to bed and hadn’t appeared for a week. Waiting.

‘I thought Elinor was getting a little better, but …’ Goodfellowe shrugged his shoulders. That’s what men do. Shrug. Never admit to pain. ‘And it’s tough on Samantha.’

‘It would be on any twelve-year-old. I’m very sorry, Tom.’

‘Thanks. But we’ll survive.’ Sure they would. At least, that’s what he’d thought. Though now he wasn’t quite so confident. Nor were Elinor’s doctors. There was talk of a nursing home.

Matthew could sense the loneliness. ‘You fancy coming round for a curry one evening? Flo-Jo would love to see you.’ Matthew and Goodfellowe had shared many snatched meals during their time on the Ministerial tour together and Goodfellowe had taken a particular fancy to the food that Matthew’s wife always seemed able to produce at a moment’s notice. Green chicken curry was his favourite. With extra chilli and plenty of plump, sweet sultanas.

Mind-blowing. Flo-Jo wasn’t her real name, but a pet name insisted on by Matthew. ‘From the first night I met her she’s never hung around,’ he once explained; ‘the fastest woman I’ve ever known.’ And Goodfellowe assumed he wasn’t referring simply to her cooking.

‘Be great. Love to.’ And meant it. But not tonight. He wasn’t in the mood to do justice to either the cooking or the company. Lucretia, bloody Lucretia, had offended his manhood, ignored him, and after painful months being denied proper female companionship such insults were especially wounding. He had to leave, before he began to find Lucretia – or someone like her – almost desirable and made a fool of himself. He glanced at his watch. ‘Got places to go.’

Matthew knew this was a lie. He had his own copy of the Ministerial diary. ‘Then I’ll take you.’

‘No, old friend. I need some time on my own.’

‘Then as an old friend I’ve got to tell you that’s the last thing you need.’

‘It’s a big day tomorrow. I’ll see you then.’ And with that Goodfellowe left one of the few reliable friends he had ever found in politics.

Goodfellowe decided to slip out quietly. He hadn’t met the guest of honour, and to leave without exchanging some form of greeting would unquestionably be regarded as rude. But the guest was besieged by admirers and Goodfellowe had had enough of crowds and impatient elbows for one evening. Anyway, an audience was included in Goodfellowe’s diary of official duties towards the end of the week – although by that time it would scarcely matter. Nothing seemed to matter very much any more.

He edged his way around the mass of people to the point where he was passing directly beneath the Second Earl of Cholmondeley (or at least his portrait) when his way was abruptly barred by a man clad in a wine-red shawl, right arm bare to the shoulder and holding his hands together and upright in the traditional Buddhist form of greeting.

It was the Dalai Lama.

Suddenly the room no longer seemed so crowded, so claustrophobic. Others had drawn back a pace, leaving Goodfellowe to effect his own introduction. ‘Thomas Goodfellowe,’ the politician offered.

The Lama laughed, a resonant noise like drums being beaten deep within his breast, and behind his glasses the eyes puckered in humour. ‘Of course you are. Goodfellowe. Goodfellowe!’ The name seemed to cause him considerable mirth and he swiped at the name like a benevolent cat might play with a mouse. The Dalai Lama, exiled leader of the distant Buddhist kingdom of Tibet, advanced and took both of the Minister’s hands eagerly in his own, as if he were greeting a long-lost friend. He continued to chuckle and smile, nodding a head that was scraped almost hairless in monastic style. ‘I am very pleased to meet you, Thomas Goodfellowe.’ The mouth and ears were small, the brown skin weathered by exposure to elements and adversity, the glasses prominent; all the features led Goodfellowe’s attention to the Lama’s eyes, which sparkled and danced, like small crescents of the moon. Some aspect of those eyes, some attribute hidden deep away, seemed somehow familiar, like an elusive memory.

‘I am a considerable admirer of your country,’ Goodfellowe offered, since the Lama showed no indication of wanting to lead the conversation. ‘At home I have a beautiful bronze Buddha’s head.’ He’d picked it up on impulse one Saturday morning a few years ago, from Ormonde’s in the Portobello Road, a piece whose serenity had captivated him. ‘Sadly, I suspect, torn from one of your temples.’

‘Everything of value has been torn from our temples, Thomas Goodfellowe.’

‘I am sorry,’ Goodfellowe offered, taking the Lama’s comment as a rebuke.

But the deep bass drums within the Lama’s chest began to resound with laughter once again. ‘Better you have it and appreciate it, than it lie unnoticed beneath the boots of the Chinese Army. Indeed, perhaps that is the true task of the People’s Liberation Army. To make sure that the message and beauty of Tibetan Buddhism will be spread throughout the world.’ His arm waved expansively. ‘Like bees spreading pollen.’

‘I suppose so,’ Goodfellowe responded cautiously, finding the analogy uncomfortable.

The Lama laid a hand upon Goodfellowe’s shoulder. The gesture brought them still closer together but Goodfellowe felt none of the typical English diffidence at the unexpected intimacy; somehow it felt entirely natural. ‘At last our paths cross. In this life,’ the Lama offered.

At least, that’s what Goodfellowe thought he heard him say. Our paths cross. In this life. With the punctuation between the two thoughts definitive and deliberate. As though their paths might have crossed before.

‘“In this life”?’ Goodfellowe enquired.

‘We Buddhists believe in many lives.’ The voice was remarkably resonant; it seemed to spend an exceptionally long time travelling through the passages of the skull, giving it an unusual and deep timbre.

‘And you believe … we may have met before?’ Goodfellowe asked incredulously. ‘In a previous life?’

‘Who is to know?’ the Lama responded. ‘But the past is no more than a signpost on our way. It is the future that must concern us, Thomas Goodfellowe. You will be important to our future, I think.’

‘Me?’

Someone was at the Lama’s elbow now, trying to guide him on.

‘I wish you well tomorrow, Thomas Goodfellowe.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Goodfellowe was perplexed. How could the Lama know? But surely it was just another ambiguous turn of phrase. Like a fairground fortune teller.

‘And for all your days thereafter. We shall meet again.’

He was turning to leave but Goodfellowe placed a restraining hand on his arm, puzzled by the ambiguities, angered by the almost casual manner in which the Lama pretended to know more, much more, than he obviously could. Or should.

‘When? When shall we meet?’

The Lama took both of his hands once more and stared directly into his eyes. The wrinkles of amusement were gone.

‘Perhaps only after many troubles, Thomas Goodfellowe, my friend. But I want you to remember two things. That whatever it is you do, it is your motivation that matters above all else. Many may misunderstand you, but it matters not, so long as you understand yourself.’

The words struck him like a slap across the face. Understand himself? How could he? Goodfellowe was lost on the great ocean of life. His son drowned. Sails torn. His compass gone. The only thing he understood was that he couldn’t take much more of it. He felt angry again, as though the Lama had penetrated his soul and ransacked his emotions. The guest of honour was turning to leave.

‘What is the second thing?’ Goodfellowe shouted after him.

The Lama half turned. ‘That the future has a Chinese face.’ Then in a sweep of colourful robe he was gone.

Suddenly Goodfellowe felt flushed, bemused. What on earth did this strange-sounding Lama mean? What future? And why a Chinese face? It sounded surprisingly defeatist, coming from a man who had spent a lifetime trying to ensure that the only part of the Chinese anatomy his countrymen saw was the back. Above him George, the second Earl of Cholmondeley, stared down. Three hundred years earlier the good earl had been a groom to the bedchamber, Member of Parliament, lord-lieutenant of half a dozen counties and an excellent marshal who had rallied troops to the cause of four monarchs. That’s what the Dalai Lama was doing, Goodfellowe decided: trying to recruit him for the cause. He’d probably get a letter in a couple of days asking for a donation, or perhaps a subscription to some Himalayan hill-walking society. Well, tough. Money was tight and charity ran out at the door of Elinor’s nursing home.

As he was leaving, for the first time he noticed that he was holding a string of prayer beads, small circular pieces of old sandalwood threaded on silk. The Lama had left them with him; he hadn’t noticed.

That night, Goodfellowe dreamed, more vividly than he had ever dreamed before. He was sitting on a rock at the mouth of a cave. Alone. In the distance he could see mountains more vast than any he had ever known, great slabs of grey-green rock and shadows of deepest purple, leaping up from the land and stretching for the sky. A sky the colour of polished lapis. Before the mountains lay a great plain, filled with snow so intensely white that it must have been many feet thick and perhaps many centuries old. From somewhere nearby, but unseen, came the rushing of meltwater. Then the meltwater came into view, spreading like a stain across the snow. A deep red stain. Like the flowing of a lama’s robe.

The colour of flowing blood.

Goodfellowe woke with sweat trickling down his chest. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get back to sleep that night. And, after he had put in his letter of resignation to the Prime Minister, not for many nights to come.

‘Madame Lin!’ Goodfellowe exclaimed, almost as if in surprise. ‘What a pleasure. Please – come in.’

The expression on the face of the veteran Chinese diplomat made it evident that this was not one of those pleasures to be shared. Hers was an elegant face, not round and androgynous in the manner of many ageing Chinese but with high cheekbones and full lips that, when they smiled, were still very feminine. This morning, however, they were not smiling. The bun that held back the fine silver sixty-something hair seemed to have been tightened an extra turn and the dark-spice eyes, which so often glowed with humour, were narrowed and deliberately inscrutable. Her hand barely brushed the Minister’s palm in greeting.

The Ambassador was followed into Goodfellowe’s Ministerial office by her interpreter. Madame Lin spoke excellent English – with an American undertow picked up at Harvard – but there were rules of engagement to be followed this morning. Diplomatic violence was always to be undertaken in the mother tongue. For a moment Goodfellowe wondered whether he should have greeted her in the Ambassadors’ Waiting Room, a gesture of cordiality, a symbolic willingness to meet her half-way that might help soften the blow. But it could also have been taken as a sign of weakness, and such gestures had the propensity for being horribly misconstrued. There were tales filed away in the private office, and brought out only late at night, of an incident in the waiting room between one of Goodfellowe’s female predecessors and the diminutive Ambassador from the Dominican Republic, although who first laid a hand on whom varied according to the teller and the amount of water in the whisky. The Minister concerned had since gone off to become a cable TV agony aunt at three times her Ministerial salary, leaving a deep sense of loss around the masculine fringes of the Court of St James’s.

Would he be missed? Goodfellowe wondered. The Prime Minister had suggested as much when he had handed in his resignation two days before, and indeed had spent a few minutes trying to argue him out of it. But he’d soon given up. Goodfellowe was adamant, his family truly needed more of his time. Anyway, perhaps Goodfellowe’s talents were just a little too apparent for his leader’s comfort; they all but demanded his inclusion in the Cabinet at the next reshuffle. Prime Ministers like to feel they have a measure of choice in the disposition of favours, which is why they are constantly in search of abilities less evident than their own.

‘You’ll be back,’ the Prime Minister had said, not meaning it.

‘Sure,’ Goodfellowe had replied, not believing it.

But at the Prime Minister’s request Goodfellowe had agreed to stay on until the weekend to allow a decision on his replacement to be taken with deliberation, so for now Goodfellowe was going through the motions. A diplomatic game of charades. One word. Nonentity. And after the news had leaked the whole world knew it. What was still more relevant at this moment, Madame Lin knew it, too.

She refused to make herself comfortable on the sofa, insisting on perching on its edge as though ready to walk out at a moment’s notice. He sat in the easy chair beside her.

‘I have been instructed by the Government of the People’s Republic of China to protest in the strongest possible terms,’ she intoned, reading from a formal statement. The voice was husky from tobacco.

Tonelessly the interpreter translated while Goodfellowe’s private secretary scribbled hurried notes. So what else was new? Complaints from Beijing nowadays fell like apples in autumn and were normally left to rot on the ground. Particularly after Hong Kong. In Goodfellowe’s view, handing over the colony had been a great mistake, but for the Chinese it had proved to be a time of great deception, the euphoria soon draining away into what Goodfellowe described as China’s ‘duckpond of despairs’. The great tiger economy had developed ingrowing toenails. Corruption. Food riots. Then had come the failure of the absurd military adventure to retake a small outlying island off Taiwan. As the world had watched through CNN, America had coughed and the Chinese had caught a very public cold. It was all unravelling in Beijing. So they complained, endlessly and usually without merit.

‘The Dalai Lama is a splittist and a renegade and a tool of imperialism,’ Madame Lin continued, her brow furrowed. Frowning didn’t suit her, thought Goodfellowe; she had remarkably smooth skin for her age, and in her earlier years must have been something of a beauty. Is that how she had prospered? It was an ungallant thought, but Maoism was a peculiarly ungallant creed.

‘The People’s Republic of China has objected most strenuously to his presence in this country,’ she continued, ‘but we were assured that this was an informal visit, with no political overtones. Yet Ministers of the British Government have already met with the Dalai Lama and tonight he is to be a guest at the Foreign Secretary’s official residence in Carlton Gardens.’

A rather frumpy residence, in Goodfellowe’s view, but with some fine Ming blue-and-white expropriated by British troops for safekeeping while they and the French were ransacking the Summer Palace. Not the British Empire’s most laudable episode, just another in a long line of imperial punishments handed out during the last century, which was perhaps why no one had ever bothered to tell the Chinese of the porcelain’s ancestry. Although inevitably, in this brave new and abominably correct world, suggestions had been floated that the porcelain might be handed back, as a gesture of goodwill, an opportunity to creep a little closer to a market of more than a billion wallets. Goodfellowe had dug in his heels so deep he thought there was a chance he might emerge in the Yellow River. He was fed up with apologizing for the past, and with giving things back. So long as he had any say in the matter, they weren’t getting the bloody vases. As he had scrawled on the relevant memo, ‘No. They’ll just have to make do with Hong Kong.’

On the sofa, Madame Lin took a deep breath, trying to draw up her diminutive figure to its full height. The clichés of diplomatic protest were laid before him. ‘Gross interference in China’s internal affairs … my Government’s serious concerns … Britain has turned a deaf ear … Dalai’s lies and slanders … in complete disregard of the major progress on human rights made in Tibet.’

One day, just one day, Goodfellowe promised himself, he’d get to ask a Chinese why, since they claimed to have delivered Tibet from serfdom, so many of these newly liberated serfs still risked their lives trying to escape from this Maoist paradise. They walked for weeks through the Himalayas, across the highest mountains in the world, equipped with nothing more than hope and prayer. Some made it, some didn’t. Many froze. Others starved. Vulture pickings. But still they came, thousands every year. Fleeing from paradise. Yes, one day he’d ask why. But not today.

He raised his eyes. The bookcase behind Madame Lin was laden with the doodles of diplomacy – the boxes of inscribed mementoes, the paperweights and pen sets and other assorted knick-knacks that Foreign Ministers seemed compelled to exchange with each other. Most of it was engraved, over-embellished, and crap. Before every meeting one of his private secretaries would scour the room, ensuring that the gift from the visitor’s country was on prominent display. Rather like pulling the photograph of mother-in-law out of the drawer. In their own turn the Chinese were rather more subtle. Visitors to Beijing were invited to the Pearl Room where a table would be laden with strings of raw pearls, all carefully sized. They were for purchase, but at very generous prices. Yet inevitably in the diplomatic marketplace there was a careful order of things. Goodfellowe had been shown which sizes of pearl had been selected by his French counterpart, and then he had been shown those chosen by his Whitehall superior, and with great Oriental deftness had been encouraged to go a little bit better than the first while not daring to go as far as the second.