20 Cyrus

20

An expensive-looking car is parked beneath the trees in Parkside. The uniformed driver emerges from behind the wheel – a woman dressed in black trousers and a buttoned-down white blouse. With her hair pulled into a tight bun and her eyes made-up, she could be moonlighting from a job as an airline stewardess.

I glance into the rear of the car. There are no passengers.

‘Dr Haven?'

‘Yes.'

‘Mr Simon Buchan requests your company for dinner.'

‘Now?' I ask, bemused.

‘Your table is booked for eight thirty. You'll be dining at Restaurant Fourteen. I shall pick you up at eight.'

She is standing at attention with her hands behind her, as though on a parade ground. I want to ask why Mr Simon Buchan didn't call me, or send an email, or slip a note through my letterbox? Instead, he sent his driver to wait for me, which might seem sinister or foreboding, but she has a disarming smile.

‘Will Florence be joining us?' I ask.

‘I'm afraid I can't answer that.'

‘Tell Mr Buchan that I'll meet him there.'

A slight frown. ‘If that's your decision, sir.'

She doesn't move. I wonder if I'm supposed to dismiss her. She waits until I'm almost at the front door before she gets back behind the steering wheel.

Once inside, I call Florence but it goes to her voicemail. Opening my laptop, I type the name Simon Buchan into a search engine. It's a lesson I learned when I was job-hunting after university – never walk into an interview or meeting unprepared. I have no idea why Simon Buchan wants to talk to me, but Florence must have mentioned my name.

The screen refreshes. The search results are dominated by his older brother, Lord David Buchan. The Times refers to him as a ‘retro-nationalist', who wants stricter quotas on immigration and tougher border controls, but who refuses to demonise migrants and asylum seekers.

Since the wave of small boat arrivals first began, Lord Buchan has led the attacks on the government, claiming they have lost control of Britain's borders. At the same time, he has denied any links with ultra-right nationalist groups in Britain and Europe, although he admitted to meeting with a self-confessed neo-Nazi called Arnout Bakker, who served ten years for fire-bombing a mosque in Cologne.

Another story details the almost obligatory tax scandal. Details of a family educational trust were leaked to the press, including millions held in shady offshore tax structures, none of which had been disclosed in Lord Buchan's parliamentary statement of interests. His opponents labelled him a hypocrite because he had previously denounced the use of tax havens.

Finally, I reach a story about Simon Buchan, the younger brother. Both boys went to the same school, King's in Canterbury, and then on to Cambridge, where Simon graduated with a land economics and law degree before joining a merchant bank in London. Following a stint as a commodities trader, he began his own hedge fund in 2002 and made a fortune during the global financial crisis in 2008.

Most articles refer to him as a philanthropist, or a self-made billionaire, with business interests that included hotels, employment services and labour hire companies. Although deeply private and publicity shy, he had lobbied successive governments to do more to combat modern-day slavery and sex-trafficking, as well as treating refugees and asylum seekers with greater compassion.

Christmas dinner must be interesting in the Buchan family – two brothers with diametrically opposed political views, pouring wine and exchanging gifts. Maybe they call a truce for the day, a temporary ceasefire, or perhaps they lock the elephant in a different room.

I look for photographs of Simon Buchan, but struggle to find any apart from a rowing picture from his days at Cambridge and a corporate headshot from his time as a merchant banker.

Poppy's ears prick up as a key slides into the front door. She scrambles off the sofa and goes to greet Evie in the hallway.

‘Hello,' I say.

Evie doesn't answer. She walks past the library and up the stairs. I leave the desk and look up at her, noticing her clothes and her make-up and my denim jacket.

‘Where have you been?'

‘Out.'

‘Want to talk about it?'

‘No.'

Everything about her body language screams at me to leave her alone.

‘I won't be in for dinner. There's some lasagne left in the fridge.'

‘Fine.'

‘Have you heard from Dr Bennett?'

Her bedroom door has closed.

The restaurant is in a converted warehouse where the blackened brick walls and beams have become design features. The number fourteen is printed or embossed on every menu, wine glass, place setting and item of cutlery.

A ma?tre d' takes my coat and consults a computer tablet. ‘This way, sir.'

I follow her through the restaurant, weaving between tables, past windows that overlook the city. We leave the dining room and enter a corridor.

‘Excuse me, where are we going?' I ask.

‘The private dining room.'

‘How many of us are there?'

‘Two.'

She ushers me into a darkened room with a small well-lit single table covered in a starched white tablecloth with two place settings for dinner. A bottle of white wine is resting in an ice-bucket on a stand, and a bottle of red wine has been placed on a sideboard. Open. Breathing.

It's only after she's gone that I realise that I'm not alone. A figure is silhouetted against a large picture window that offers views across the square to the dome of Nottingham Council House, which slowly changes colour from blue to red to green.

A man turns and steps into the light. ‘Dr Haven, thank you so much for joining me.' His handshake is dry and firm. His smile as white as the tablecloth. He holds on to my hand for a beat longer than I expect, trapping me in his gaze. ‘Florence has told me so much about you.'

‘I thought she might be here.'

‘She had an errand to run for me.'

He pulls out a chair. ‘I hope you don't mind dining so intimately. I'm not comfortable in crowds.'

‘I could probably unpack that,' I say.

He looks alarmed but then smiles. ‘Of course, you're a psychologist. I shall have to watch myself. Red or white.'

‘White,' I say.

He fills a glass, tilting it up against the light, before handing it to me.

‘How did you know I was a psychologist?' I ask.

‘I always find it useful to know who I'm meeting.'

‘I'm the same,' I say. ‘You're not as famous as your brother.'

He laughs. ‘Or as newsworthy.'

He takes a seat, crossing his legs, one hand in his lap and the other holding the stem of his wine glass. He has an interesting face, remarkable for its blandness. No features stand out. I wonder how a caricaturist would draw him because there is nothing obvious to exaggerate or distort. There is too much symmetry.

‘I want to thank you for your bravery and the assistance you've given to Florence and the young boy who survived the crossing. How is he?'

‘Traumatised but talking.'

‘What is going to happen to him?'

‘He'll go into foster care until they establish if he has any living relatives.'

‘I wish to fund his asylum application.'

‘It might be better if he went home.'

‘He was looking for a new one.'

There is a moment where the silence settles over us.

Simon begins speaking first. ‘What does he need? I can provide him with clothes, accommodation, a phone, an education.'

‘He is fine for the moment,' I say. ‘Can I ask you why you want to help him?'

‘Despite appearances, Cyrus, I am not a pessimist. I have not lost all faith in the human condition. I also realise that not everybody is fortunate enough to be born into a country as rich and prosperous as this one. I am aware that often in this nation's history we have taken advantage of other countries or peoples, taking more than we gave back.'

‘Albania was not part of the British Empire.'

‘I'm aware of that.'

Suddenly, it dawns on me. ‘Buchan isn't your original family name.'

‘My grandfather, Josef Paumer, fled from Czechoslovakia in 1938 when the Nazis annexed the Sudetenland and more than two hundred thousand people, Czechs and Jews and anti-fascists, escaped because they knew what was coming. My grandfather was sixteen. He hijacked cars, drugged guards, broke into houses and walked for twenty-eight days, through Austria, into Italy, crossing the Alps in the depths of winter.'

‘Why isn't that a story I've read?'

‘My father downplayed our history. He thought our grandfather was a traitor, who should have stayed and fought the fascists rather than running away.'

‘Why change your name?'

‘My grandfather married into the Buchan family and took the name of his wife. Lucy was shunned by her parents for marrying a penniless foreigner, but she punished them by keeping her family name. Eventually, her parents begged for forgiveness.'

‘Your grandfather won them over.'

‘No. He bought them out.' Simon laughs and takes a sip of wine, swirling it around in his mouth. ‘Death duties were forcing the Buchan family to sell their ancestral home in Scotland. By then their unsuitable son-in-law, my grandfather, had become a wealthy man. He bought the house and kept it in the family.'

‘A grand gesture.'

‘The ultimate fuck you.'

‘Is he still alive?'

‘No.'

‘You and your brother are very different.'

A wry smile. ‘David calls me the biggest people smuggler in Europe. He says I facilitate the crossings and put lives at risk. I disagree, of course, but he is entitled to his opinions.'

‘Even if they're racist?'

‘My brother isn't a racist. He would have been mortified by the loss of those migrant lives.'

‘Have you ever heard of someone called the Ferryman?'

Puzzlement. ‘No, who is he?'

‘That depends on who you ask.'

We're interrupted by two waiters, carrying plates.

‘I took the liberty of ordering the degustation menu,' says Buchan. ‘I hope you don't mind.'

The food is beautifully presented and matched with different wines. We eat and talk about the state of the world – energy prices, the war in Ukraine, global warming and the rise of China. Simon Buchan is easy company, well read and well travelled.

‘I've always imagined that philanthropy must be the perfect job,' I say. ‘Giving away money. Helping the needy.'

‘There are ups and downs.'

‘Downs?'

‘The more I spend, the more I realise how little I'm achieving. A soup kitchen can feed the hungry, a church hall can shelter the homeless, a non-profit can teach adults to read, but without changes in public policy, problems like hunger, homelessness and illiteracy will continue to exist. That's why I sometimes question whether philanthropy changes anything or whether it perpetuates the status quo, the historic power imbalance that keeps the disadvantaged in their place.'

‘You're helping people.'

‘At what cost? Some argue that philanthropy is an exercise in power. It doesn't deserve gratitude, it deserves scrutiny.'

‘What sort of scrutiny?'

‘Every dollar spent on a museum or a gallery or a theatre or a dogs' home is a dollar that could have helped cure malaria or river blindness or cancer. Who decides what is effective altruism? You? Me?'

He looks at the table. ‘According to the World Food Programme, ten pounds could feed a hungry child in Africa for one month. For the price of this meal, lovely as it is, we could have fed a village.'

‘Now I feel guilty.'

A wry smile. ‘I shall feed a village tomorrow.'