CHAPTER 37
It was past midnight when Eddie left the Istana. He took a taxi back to his bed and breakfast place, but his mind was too occupied with his conversation with Isobel to sleep. She’d quizzed him for an hour about his Huggy student days.
“Do you still believe in what you were doing forty years ago,” she’d asked.
“Of course,” he’d replied. “I just use different methods now, one of which is being a constant nuisance to big business and politicians. It is, of course, futile. Companies won’t change because they need to remain in business. Politicians won’t change because they are too weak and won’t make big, difficult decisions in case they’re not re-elected. The world is overpopulated. The UN is powerless. What one country decides to do for the good of the environment is useless if the other two hundred don’t and people don’t live long enough for it to bother them sufficiently. The day of reckoning gets closer, though. It’s future generations that will suffer. Meanwhile, the selfish pursuit of making money drives us further towards self-destruction. Yes, planetary exploration is useful but how are we going to move all eight billion to some distant planet with a climate like here? Anything that can be done to pinpoint problems and arrive at viable solutions must be worthwhile.”
“Are you an angry man, Eddie?”
“I am a patient man frustrated by lack of progress.”
“Were you angry with me when we first met?”
“That’s a typical female question if I may say so. No man would dare ask that.”
She’d laughed. “What I mean is you seemed to have a preconceived opinion of Vital and therefore me.”
“I assumed you were in charge and were responsible.”
“You saw problems very quickly, Eddie.”
“I saw weaknesses that were being ignored, weaknesses that only compounded my strong opinions about what I call the vanity business. And you, the company chairman, seemed too busy on other things to care. That question still remains. Why do you need so many other distractions?”
“It’s true,” Isobel had agreed rather sadly. “But that is what is expected these days, particularly of women. Rumour has it that women can do a lot of things at the same time.”
“I’ve heard that too, but are all those things done well? Quality not quantity? Surely one job done well is better than many jobs done badly.”
“At least I’d spotted signs of problems.”
“But it seemed to me you had decided to do something in case reputations were brought into disrepute. That public perceptions of Vital and its directors might not look good. Might that be another classic female response? To cover the cracks for the sake of appearances again? Why didn’t you do something because you felt the company was being run incompetently and possibly being used for criminal purposes?”
Isobel hadn’t answered.
“Did you not confront Nicholas Carstairs, your Chief Executive - the Prime Minister’s young brother – about your concerns? And what about your sister, whose husband was the one you suspected?”
“I did all that and that’s when things started to get difficult.”
“So how long did you wait before seeing me?”
“Too long, Eddie.”
At some point late in the evening Isobel had ordered a plate of room service sandwiches. Eddie had objected but was overruled. While they waited, he’d asked if he could use the bathroom and, on his way, passed the wardrobe. This was another revelation. Whereas his clothes were still stuffed in his bag, Isobel had arranged a vast range of suits, shirts, trousers and skirts on a rail with proper hangers. It was enough for a world tour.
The bathroom was a sparkling, white-tiled room with so many mirrors he’d felt disorientated. He saw his socks draped over a towel rail and the shelf over the sink resembled the cosmetics counter at Boots. Plastic bottles of shampoo and conditioner, pink cartons of powders, creams and lotions, a strangely shaped comb, little circular mirrors and a little black brush sticking out of a tiny black pot. There was a bottle of something called ‘gleam cream’ and another of ‘light-diffusing enhancer’. Dear Lord, Eddie had thought, no wonder Isobel was a shareholder in the industry. And yet, across the world well over a billion humans lived in absolute poverty.
He was still thinking about world poverty and starvation when room service arrived - a tray with white napkins and a plate of neat, triangles of white bread containing cheese and ham with the crusts removed and all held together with toothpicks. Eddie’s interest, though, was taken by the fresh sprig of Coriandrum sativum which he knew could suffer from damping off caused by Rhizoctonia solani. This specimen, however, looked unaffected.
“Is this dinner?” he’d asked.
“Supper,” said Isobel. “A snack. And now you’ve inspected it, you really must eat it, Eddie. You’re hardly overweight. Look at you.”
He’d picked up a sandwich. “I prefer not to look at myself,” he admitted as he chewed and thought about the mirrors in the bathroom. “If I feel OK, then I assume I must be OK. If there’s an invisible, internal fault then I assume it’ll eventually show itself as pain or discomfort. I have one mirror in the house that belonged to my mother. Sometimes I glimpse myself in the men’s toilet at the university but it’s not an image I linger over. Mirrors cause dissatisfaction, discontent and depression. They encourage the spread of that terrible human sickness called vanity.”
“But they can be useful in detecting dribbles of mayonnaise, Eddie. Wipe your chin.”
He’d wiped it with his hand and continued. “Reflecting glass was a useful invention but no-one considered, let alone documented, the side effects. The still water of a pond or a lake is bad enough. The calm waters of the legend of Narcissus who contemplated his own beauty in the reflections and then, of course, became so fascinated by himself that he toppled in and drowned. Isn’t that where much of humanity is heading – drowning in its own self-admiration?
“Nowadays narcissism is the taking of selfies, the carrying of mirrors in handbags and hanging them on bathroom walls and the thriving cosmetics industry. But it is, nevertheless, pure narcissism. And what do we now see, especially amongst the over-pampered, have-it-all, peace loving young who live surrounded by calm waters? Not drowning but addiction, mental illness and even suicide
“In the absence of violent, stormy waters, rippling water would be better. Rippling water distorts. It challenges you to consider what is real. The invention of mirrors led to pride, ostentation, arrogance, tyranny and vanity. What you see in a mirror is what is now, not yesterday nor tomorrow. And that’s the problem with modern society isn’t it? We live only for today.”
Eddie’s words had been slightly tongue-in-the-cheek but not too far from his opinion. Mirrors were good for technology but not for checking your appearance
“Vanity is like a flower that never bears fruit,” he’d concluded with just a faint smile.
Isobel had sighed. “Perhaps you’re right, Eddie, but might a mirror be useful to check your hair?”
He knew she was now mocking him but it no longer mattered.
“The hairs on my head demand respect. They are survivors,” he said.
“And very independently minded. Since you lay on the sofa they are heading in many different directions.”
“Leave them alone. And if the grey colour bothers you, let me tell you it’s wisdom highlights.”
“Very poetic, Eddie, but still depressing.”
He’d grabbed another sandwich. “You even find the description of my home-grown seedlings depressing?”
“You are depressing in an enlightening and entertaining way, Eddie.”
“Good,” he’d replied. “It’s constructive argument. It’s alternative thinking and I can’t change, so don’t even try. Young twigs might bend but not old trees.”
Around midnight, he’d asked her more about herself. “As Baroness Isobel Johnson what exactly do you do in the House of Lords?”
She’d laughed. “It’s a good question, Eddie. Did I want the honour? Do I want it now? Did I feel I’d done enough to warrant it? Was it the equality agenda? That I was a young woman? Was it a family connection? Was it merely for speaking at a few conferences to encourage a few young women into business? Was it merely because my face was in a few magazines? These things are discussed in dark corners over champagne and canapes and then you get a tap on the shoulder. It’s utter hypocrisy. There are far more worthy people out there who go unnoticed. I’m looking to resign.”
That had surprised him. “Why?” he asked her.
“To change things.”
Eddie hadn’t pursued that statement. He was pleased but he left it hanging there. After all, change meant putting your own small house in order first.