Free A Fool's Alphabet by Sebastian Faulks Page B

your publishing experience, Harry, I think it would be a cinch. We’d be looking at a modest turnover to begin with: not more than half a million in the first year, but after that . . .’ Coleman pursed his lips and shrugged suggestively.
    â€˜We’d probably get a grant,’ said Pietro.
    â€˜Christ, they’re falling over themselves to give you money,’ said Coleman.
    â€˜That’s enough now,’ said Mrs Coleman. ‘You can finish later.’
    She couldn’t have timed the interruption better if she had planned it with her husband. Pietro looked at Harry and could see him rubbing at his chin with the first two fingers of his left hand. It meant he was interested.
    â€˜I want to know how you all met each other,’ Mrs Coleman went on.
    â€˜We’ll talk later,’ Coleman said to Pietro.
    â€˜Are you from these parts?’ Mrs Coleman said to Martha.
    â€˜Oh no. I’m from New York. At least, I was raised in Boston, but I was working in New York when I met Harry. But I keep in touch with my cousins. We’re a close family. When Harry mentioned Pietro was going to Chicago, it seemed a good idea he should go see them.’
    Martha’s voice had the softness of an expensive education; even when she was exuberant there was a degree of consideration in her tone. As she began to talk about herchildhood, prompted by her hostess’s questions, Pietro noticed how Coleman stopped eating to watch her. His eyes fixed on her with an avaricious stare. Martha’s face glowed with the recollection of school and college, or summers at Cape Cod or travelling with friends. Harry had met her on vacation in Jerusalem. She was working for a law firm on Park Avenue.
    Dinner moved slowly onwards. After the melon there was fish, prepared in some Spanish way that left the bones scattered hazardously through the tomato-coloured sauce, and then chicken in cream and mushrooms with very white boiled rice, a choice of lemon, coffee or raspberry mousse, cheese and biscuits and coffee from a thermos flask that doubled as a jug. Mrs Coleman pushed glass dishes of chocolates round the table. She seemed to have imported English cuisine to the Midwest.
    Afterwards in his study Coleman gave Pietro and Harry more details about his business plan. He wanted to produce a new series of street maps and guides, beginning with London, but going on to other large cities. They would be aimed principally at foreign visitors and would be in various languages.
    â€˜Look at what there is at the moment,’ he said. ‘Dull maps printed on toilet paper. We start with new maps. We print in colour. We fill the books with historical information and help for tourists. Addresses, phone numbers, cinemas, museums and so on. It’s a market monopolised by one player at the moment. We can take them apart.’
    He had prepared a printed synopsis which he intended to show to potential investors. He told them he had a certain amount of capital of his own to put into the project; it would be one of several he was financing. Harry began to question him. Coleman poured brandy from a crystal decanter. Pietro listened. Coleman drained four glasses in ten minutes. The deal proposed by Coleman was more far-reaching for Pietro than it would be for Harry. For some reason it would involve his own company becoming nominally at least a subsidiaryof Coleman’s, while he himself would have to work in Coleman’s office. ‘Tax advantages all round,’ Coleman said. He poured more brandy. His speech became slurred but his confidence was overpowering. He had finished in Chicago and was headed back to London. The evidence of his material success was all around him.

FULHAM
LONDON ENGLAND 1964
    PIETRO TOOK THE tube from Baker Street and got to his new school early. He wore his blazer and school tie and braced himself for some arcane initiation rite in which someone would hold his head down the lavatory or swab