Under the Channel. Gilles Pétel

      Contents

       1

      Perhaps it was enough just to have made it to St Pancras despite the Friday traffic, to have noted the time of the train on the departures board and to have savoured the prospect of the journey, the arrival at Gare du Nord, the glass of champagne at Terminus Brasserie. Was it really worth actually making the trip?

      John glanced briefly at his watch, a Rolex he had bought five years earlier. Five years already? he wondered. It was five o’clock now. His train left at 18.05, so he would definitely have time for a couple of pints of Guinness at the Black Swan, a pub he was getting to know quite well.

      John Burny was treating himself to a weekend in Paris, as he often did. Two nights in a hotel, a few good meals and some action would recharge his batteries. He would be back at work on Monday morning revitalised.

      To John, the weekend started the moment he closed the smart, wide glass door of the Chelsea estate agent where he worked. The anticipation of the journey that lay ahead made him see everything in a different light. He was already somewhere else without having taken a single step. The run-of-the-mill corner pub he often stopped at after work suddenly had a renewed appeal, and he started to regret not being able to drink there this weekend. He felt ready for new experiences and was falling in love again with the proud city he had been so in awe of when he arrived as a young man. He had come to London barely twenty years old from his native Glasgow. His accent betrayed not only his country of origin but also his modest background. He quickly learned how to turn this to his advantage. The rich clients he served at the agency found him entertaining and were charmed as much by the good-looking man’s broad Scots vowels as by the luxurious apartments he showed them. They liked John for his lack of pretension which they judged came from him being a provincial with a strong accent. Now that his time was entirely his own, with a train ticket in hand and three-quarters of an hour to spare, John looked at London with a new desire to make the most of it and to conquer it.

      ‘Shit,’ he realised. ‘It’s raining.’

      Hurrying across the Euston Road by St Pancras, John was almost run over by a double-decker. The bus driver blasted his horn, forcing John to make for the pavement in two giant strides, which almost catapulted him into the arms of an Indian man waiting to cross. Embarrassed, John mumbled his apologies, before noticing how attractive the young man was. He was about to speak to him, but the man had already taken off. John watched him admiringly as he crossed, moving gracefully in his white tunic. Then he vanished, swallowed up by the mouth of the tube. The one good thing about the Empire, thought John, was that it had brought variety to the drabness of old England. The weather didn’t look like brightening up. A north-easterly wind had begun to blow and the cloud was thickening. The rain was setting in. He was now desperate for a pint.

      ‘Guinness,’ he yelled to get the attention of the barman, probably a Brazilian judging from his accent and facial features. He wore a look of constant surprise and, in common with many of Rio’s Cariocas, was perma-tanned.

      He was a good-looking guy, doing the best job he could – quite a bad job – of keeping up with the orders being thrown at him from all sides of the bar. The young Englishwoman beside him was making heavy work of drying a glass, ignoring the baying hordes and staring up at the wall-mounted flatscreen TV, which was tuned to a news channel broadcasting stories on a loop. Since the beginning of that week, all anyone had talked about was the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The picture showed trainee bankers trailing out onto the street with a pocket summary of their careers – a computer, three or four folders and a handful of plastic wallets – shoved hastily inside cardboard boxes of the kind used for supermarket deliveries. Repeated over and over like the images of 9/11, the footage made a deep impression on viewers who were always receptive to a catastrophe, whether ecological, terrorist or, indeed, financial. In spite of himself, John turned to look at the ill-boding screen, as fascinated as everyone else by the strings of negative numbers flashing up in a box to one side of the picture. It was possible to take in the fluctuations of the stock market and the looks of despair on the faces of the Lehman Brothers staff all at once. John knew the figures. His boss, a wily old Scot, had called his two agents to a meeting that very morning in order to discuss the state of the market. House prices in London were falling; sales were slowing down. The picture onscreen had abruptly changed and now depicted the aftermath of a car bombing in Baghdad. Seventy-two people had been killed. At the sight of the victims’ maimed bodies, a section of the audience had to avert their eyes. John realised his glass was empty.

      ‘Guinness,’ he yelled again.

      Was it really such a great idea to splash three thousand pounds on a trip to Paris? John paused to consider. ‘If I’m going to get sacked next week,’ he thought to himself, ‘I may as well blow the bank one last time – while the banks are still open.’ When he got back, he would tighten his belt. His pint had just been set down on the bar in front of him. The sight of it lifted his spirits. The financial crisis was just a blip. The Financial Times was predicting the economy would bounce back in January. Worst-case scenario, February or March. The company would get through it. The venerable Mr McGallan wouldn’t give up his pride and joy that easily. John slowly wet his lips with the cool, white, thick head of his Guinness. How could his boss even consider getting rid of him? There was no way Kate could cope alone. But would that always be the case?

      John sipped his second beer, his mind divided between background anxiety and the pleasure of the moment. This was a much more enjoyable pint than the first, which he had drunk too quickly, almost in one go. The same went for sex, it occurred to John. It was always better the second time; once the nervous fumbling was out of the way, it was more intense, more confident, more assured.

      The previous weekend as he was leaving a performance of Mahler’s last symphony at the Royal Albert Hall, John had met

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