Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [10]
Mike, bless him, is filthy rich, which he atones for by still wearing his hair in a ponytail and favouring blue jeans (Polo Ralph Lauren’s, mind you), but, happily, no earrings. Or Nehru jackets any longer. Or Mao caps. He’s a property baron. Owner of some choice houses in Highgate, Hampstead, Swiss Cottage, Islington, and Chelsea, which he accumulated before inflation hit, and converted into flats. He’s also into some things offshore, which I’d rather not know about, and deals in commodity futures. He and Caroline live in modish Fulham, which I remember before the DIY-trained yuppies invaded. They also own a dacha high in the hills of the Alpes-Maritimes, not far from Vence, a vineyard running down its slopes. In three generations, from the shtetl to the makers of Château Panofsky. What can I say?
Mike is a partner in a restaurant for the smart set. It’s in Pimlico, called The Table, the chef ruder than he is talented, which is de rigueur these days, isn’t it? Too young to remember Pearl Harbor, or what happened to the Canadians taken prisoner at — at — you know, that impregnable outpost in the Far East. Not the one where the dawn comes up like thunder, no, but the place where the Sassoons struck it rich. Singapore? No. The place like the name of the gorilla in that film with Fay Wray. Kong. Hong Kong. And, look, I know that Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, and I remember who wrote The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Came to me unbidden. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit was written by Frederic Wakeman8 and the movie starred Clark Gable and Sydney Greenstreet.
Anyway, too young to remember Pearl Harbor, Mike invested heavily in the Japanese market in the early days and dumped everything at the propitious moment. He rode gold through the OPEC scare, whipping his stake past the finishing line, doubling it, and made another killing speculating in sterling in 1992. He had bet on Bill Gates before anybody had heard of E-mail.
Yes, my first-born son is a multimillionaire with both a social and a cultural conscience. He’s a member of a trendy theatre board, a promoter of in-your-face plays wherein top people’s leggy daughters feel free to pretend to shit on stage and RADA guys simulate bum-fucking with abandon. Ars longa, vita brevis. He’s one of the more than two hundred backers of the monthly Red Pepper magazine (“feminist, antiracist, environmentalist, and internationalist”); and, not without a redeeming sense of humour, he has added my name to the subscription list. The most recent issue of Red Pepper includes a full-page ad, an appeal for donations by London Lighthouse, which features a photograph of a sickly young woman, her staring eyes rimmed with dark circles, looking into a hand-held mirror.
“SHE TOLD HER HUSBAND THAT SHE WAS HIV+. HE TOOK IT BADLY.”
What was the poor bastard supposed to do? Take her to dinner at The Ivy to celebrate?
In any event, as Mr. Bellow has already noted, more die of heartbreak. Or lung cancer, speaking as a prime candidate.
True, Mike shops for shiitake mushrooms, Japanese seaweed, Nishiki rice, and shiromiso soup at Harvey Nichols’ Food Hall, but, emerging on Sloane Street, he always remembers to buy a copy of The Big Issue from the bum lurking there. He owns an art gallery in Fulham that has proven itself, as it were, having twice been charged with obscenity. He and Caroline make