Father and Son (23 page)

Kings College,
Cambridge

Thursday June
21st, 1990

John Ray had a
finger pushed into one ear and the telephone receiver held to the other. He still
couldn’t hear. Around him on the stairwell girls in ball gowns and young men in
black suits and bow ties were talking in ridiculously loud voices, bouncing on
their toes, the best night of their lives suddenly upon them, their faces
aglow, beaming, joyous.

From the Main Hall down the corridor came the sound of the James
Taylor Quartet, lugubrious and massively cool, the Hammond organ moaning and
warbling until every speaker growled with distortion. From the telephone booth,
the echoing noise of the band was slightly surreal; it made John laugh at the awesome,
ridiculous
fun
of just being there.

“Joe? When? Joe, I can’t hear you!”

He huddled further into the booth, trying to get his arm around his
head, as if this might improve things. Joe had left a message with the porters
earlier in the day. The day of the college ball: the worst day to contact
anyone at Cambridge. The place had been in upheaval since dawn, an endless
stream of caterers, technicians, florists, musicians and security officers; and
amid all this, hundreds of students darted about the courts, girls with voluminous
dresses in their arms, young men in search of shoe polish, or someone with a
needle and thread.

Out behind the enormous chapel, on the lawn by the river Cam, fairground
rides were being erected, plus coconut shies and food stalls and Pimms tents. Meanwhile,
steel bands and string quartets and harpists were dragging their instruments in
through the main gates, looking confused, being pointed here and there by
grinning college porters who’d seen it all before.

For a dizzying twelve hours Kings College would be transformed from
a seat of learning into the grandest of private parties. Live music, endless
food and drink, every vista a magical fairytale… If you were to stop and take
it all in, you might think you’d landed in Versailles on the night of the
King’s birthday. It was an experience that dropped you into another world, a
world of dreams, one that few people would ever see.

And that, of course, is the point.

“Tomorrow? But I’m at a
ball
, Joe!”

“It’s five grand,” came his brother’s voice down the receiver. “I
thought you needed some cash.”

It was true. John wanted money. And the reason was walking towards
him now, as he strained to listen to what Joe was telling him. Tall and
athletic, she was as blonde as a Nordic goddess, with a knowing smile that
never quite gave anything away. They’d been seeing each other most of the year,
nothing too serious, but more than casual. And now, with finals over, she was
heading back home to New Zealand. Her parents had a spare flat in Christchurch,
and John was welcome to join her. They could hang out there for a year, travel.
Whatever.

“Come on!” she said, an ivory satin gown hugging her figure, her
skin soft and faintly freckled, and with that gorgeous bloom of freshness that seems
to be the genetic preserve of Kiwis. “You’re missing it.”

He nodded like an obedient puppy. She laughed, amused to see that he
was still mesmerised by her dress, which he’d helped her into ten minutes ago.

“I’ll ring you back,” he shouted into the phone.

Slipping his hands around her waist he pulled her to him.

“God, you’re beautiful,” he said. “Y’know what, I think I am coming
to the other side of the world with you after all.”

They were delirious in each other’s company, right through the
night, knowing they had their lives ahead of them, and that the future was
inconceivably bright. Cambridge had come to an end almost without them
noticing, three years at what had seemed like a big posh boarding school,
neither of them ever feeling completely at home there, but a dream nonetheless,
a fantasyland so refined and complete that, like all the best fantasies, you
soon forget that it’s make-believe. And now, after a final dose of champagne
and Brideshead, they were ready to walk away from it.

They danced and drank as an array of bands filed on and off the main
stage. There was so much food and drink on offer that even John had to stop
eating somewhere around three in the morning. On and on it went, carousel rides
and punts on the river, drinking, smoking, loving and laughing, a night of
bliss.

And as the sun came up, they stood in the shadows of Kings College Chapel,
which glowed a strange burnished yellow in the dawn sunlight. Along with a
couple of hundred fellow revellers who’d made it to the end of the ball without
collapsing, they posed for the survivors’ photo. People hung chaotically onto
each other, a special kind of drunken camaraderie in the air, a secret, almost.
Because after three years couped up in one of the most privileged institutions
on earth, they had acquired a kind of nonchalance that was simply unavailable
elsewhere; they were, undeniably and inescapably, part of an elite.

But for those two, swaying on the grass and staring up at the
camera, it was more than that. The money from Joe would set them up. Surfing?
Trekking in Taz? Or up to Sydney? Who knew? From New Zealand the tiger
economies of South East Asia were within easy reach, and America’s west coast
was just a flight away. Hong Kong, Singapore, LA? They hardly dared think about
the possibilities.

All he had to do was a favour for his brother, and the five grand
would take him to the other side of the world, no need to go cap in hand to his
dad, no need to borrow cash from anybody. It was Joe’s graduation present to
John, timed to perfection. Good old Joe! they said all evening, raising
innumerable toasts to him, and to themselves, to their future together.

He’d finally rung Joe back a couple of hours after the ball began,
begging the use of the phone in the Main Lodge, where the porters on duty were
all merry, a little coterie of them, rosy-cheeked like Toby jugs, trying not to
look pissed. He scribbled down the details and returned to the ball, puffing on
a Monte Cristo in his brother’s honour, and knowing that at last he was about
to escape his own surname; no longer the unwilling scion of a family of conmen
and counterfeiters, he was now a member of a far bigger and prosperous elite, one
whose influence extended around the world.

The same morning, without having gone to bed, he was on a train
north.

Joe had a booze run on the go. It was as simple as that. A Transit
van full of the stuff coming over from Belgium. He did one every few months,
apparently. Not cheap stuff either. Good wines, single malts, top of the range
and no tax to pay on it. An easy way to double your money.

But they needed a new face for each run, someone that wouldn’t catch
the eye of customs if they were stopped. If the van was pulled over, there was
a back-up story: Mr Joe Ray was getting married. The booze was for the engagement
party. Five hundred guests. They had the place booked, catering, disco, the
lot; there was even a ‘fiancée’ who knew exactly what to say if Customs and
Excise gave her a call. The documents were all in the van. They just needed a
new face to drive it.

The ferry set sail that evening. John was dog tired and perhaps
still a bit drunk. A booze run for Joe? Not a bad way to earn five thousand quid,
and to start a new life on the other side of the world. There was a nice
symmetry to it, as well, one of Joe’s schemes paying for him to walk away from
the family for good. Nobody in New Zealand had ever heard of Tony Ray or the
Old Bailey trial. Knock-off perfume and leather jackets… blokes turning up at
home in the middle of the night, his dad making calls, giving orders,
disappearing without a word… What a way to grow up that had been! Now it was
all over.

He couldn’t help laughing as he looked around the car park at the
ferry terminal and saw Joe leaning against a dark blue van. How many of his
fellow students at Cambridge could boast a family like his? He’d played on it
when he first arrived at college. No choice, really. He was the college curiosity,
a northerner (which was bad enough) from a criminal family. Most people there
had never met a criminal, but they knew who Tony Ray was. It soon got annoying,
and after the fiftieth toff asked him if he knew how to get hold of cocaine,
John’d had enough.

Then, at the end of his second year, he’d met someone who genuinely
didn’t give a shit about the Old Bailey trial. She saw England for what it was,
a nation in love with a ridiculous, sepia-tinted image of itself, from its
ancient universities to its jaunty crims. And now John was going to travel to
the furthest point on the globe to be with her.

“You look pleased with yourself,” Joe said, noticing that John was
in jeans and a leather jacket, but underneath it was a crumpled, wine-stained
dress shirt, complete with cufflinks.

“Oh, I’m bloody great!” he said, giving his brother a hug, then
jumping up into the van. “Just tell me where!”

The bloke who was supposed to be driving the van had let them down
at the last minute. They needed a replacement quick, and they were willing to
pay over the odds. A couple of days’ work and five grand in his pocket. Joe
gave him the tickets, told him what to do when he got to Belgium.

The overnight crossing was a lively one, the boat lurching sideways
as well as up and down, doors slamming, people hanging onto the rails in the
corridors as they edged towards the toilets. John sat at the bar and drank whisky,
chasing away the hangover that threatened to dampen his excitement.

There was live cabaret. But it wasn’t James Taylor, and there were
no young waitresses moving silently around with silver trays of devils on
horseback and pink champagne. This was the real world, Status Quo’s greatest
hits and get your own lager from the bar. He necked a bag of peanuts, ordered
another double whisky, and went back to his reclining seat to doze away the
crossing in fitful, jubilant sleep. The real world? What did that even mean? He
had no idea. But he was about to fly to the other side of the world to find
out.

At six o’clock the next morning he drove off the ferry, cold and
sweaty in his crumpled shirt. It turned out that delay tactics don’t work with
hangovers: you buy yourself time, but there’s only so much time to buy. It
didn’t matter. It was all irrelevant now.

An hour’s drive to the wholesalers, stop off for breakfast on the
way. A little after eight and he was watching them load the van from a stack of
crates out behind the warehouse. He made a half-hearted attempt to check-off
the cargo as it went in, everything listed and itemised, ready for inspection
at Customs. Champagne first, two dozen bright orange crates of Veuve Clicquot,
then various high-end single malts, followed by wine. Lots of it. The Transit’s
suspension was holding up well, four wheels on the back axel, the tyres nice
and hard, a real smuggler’s drive. In went crate after crate of Château Margot
and Chambertin Grand Cru. Three years in the Cambridge University Wine Society
had taught him a thing or two, and as the last of it was loaded, he did a rough
calculation: he was about to drive away with close to sixty thousand quid’s
worth of booze.

“Gonna be a great party!” he said as a tall, wiry bloke in a leather
jacket appeared and grabbed the cargo list. He jumped into the van, humping
crates out of his way, right to the back, and stooped down over the orange
crates of Vueve.

A minute later he was out again, tapping the keypad of a bulky
mobile phone as he walked away, not a word to John.

“I guess not everyone’s about to start a new life,” John told
himself, shrugging as he lit a fag, wallowing in it all now, the ball, the five
grand, New Zealand, the whole damn splendour of his charmed life.

The van’s doors were slammed shut.

“Okay,” he said. “What do I sign?”

But the men doing the loading were already walking away.

So there he stood, pulling hard on a Marlboro, and taking stock of
his life: between him and paradise lay nothing more than a choppy stretch of
the North Sea.

By the time he was back on the ferry he’d requisitioned a nice
bottle of Château Margot from the van (retail fifty quid) to go with some paté,
cheese, and a stick of bread. Afternoon crossing this time, but it passed
quickly enough, the Margot from a plastic cup, the paté spread on the bread
with his fingers.

They didn’t even pull him over at Customs. He was off the ferry and
through Hull within minutes, five thousand pounds to the good. As they’d
agreed, he met Joe on a lay-by outside the city on the M62. It was close to
midnight and there was a dampness in the air that made him yearn for sun.

“Here,” his brother said, handing him a fat envelope and a set of
car keys. “Take mine. Go and see Dad. You haven’t been home for a while. He was
asking about you.” Joe looked out onto the traffic, a steady stream of lorries
and cars, most of them from the ferry. “Let’s keep quiet about this, right?”

There was a burger van further up the lay-by, a few blokes at the counter,
even at this time of night.

“Fancy something to eat?” John said, pangs of hunger in his stomach
as he smelled the frying onions.