Serious Sweet (4 page)

Jon tried to summarise and, by doing so, move on and away from bloody Sansom, ‘So he was verbally unwise, yes? That's not really news … Your Honourable Member generally—'

The Honourable Member is generally a fuck-up. What was it the last time, the last incident? The man is a walking Fat Finger – a soft, thick accident waggling about and sure to thump itself against what it should not …

Ah, yes – I remember – ‘Beware the Hun in the sun.' The last time had been in Leipzig. Fact-finding trip for comparison of this with that, or that with this – heaven forfend that MPs should achieve the same result by exchanging emails, phone calls, Skypeing, no one should ever be caused to miss an excursion. You could tell the Mancunian had prepared it – his bon mot – hooked it out as suitable for the occasion and therefore gone heartily off-piste in an address to several hundred sophisticated polyglot Europeans whose water glasses knew more about social grace and twentieth-century history than Mr Manchester ever would, even after some type of wholesale brain transplantation. The paper coasters under their water glasses could have beaten him at chess.

Chess … what am I thinking? Anything – animate, or inanimate – could beat him at chess. The coasters could have beaten him at rock, scissors, paper – at hangman – at snap.

He's got the right idea in a way. Voters are justifiably scared of clever politicians. They'll never like or trust you, never respect you – but if they can laugh at you, whether fondly or despairingly, you may prosper. Be a buffoon. But not too much of a buffoon. Don't bury yourself in the part. There is a line it's possible to cross. And Parliament's gift to Timperley would usually cross it, because he wasn't faking – he was both a genuine moron and stridently addicted to attention. One of the little-boy types who says what he hopes will earn him a spanking, because spanking is attention of a kind.

And God save us from a sly buffoon, we have no defence against that.

‘Sweet Jesus, really?
Baby's got back.
He actually said that. And this woman was …?' Jon tried to enjoy hearing a problem that was not his problem. And to enjoy reciting it back even more. ‘So to summarise, in the run-up to a general election, a white, male Parliamentary Undersecretary of State has insulted a black
, female
— Yes, it was an insult, that's why it was taken as an insult, it could hardly not have been … Because it was grotesquely discourteous, why else? And—'

Two things about Sansom – he wouldn't let you draw breath and he lied to the wrong people. Which is to say, he lied all the time. The ends of his sentences didn't even match their beginnings, so hard and fast did he reshape the narrative of each trouble that beset him. You couldn't help a person if they wouldn't acknowledge reality – reality was all you'd got and, left unplacated, it would inevitably bite you. Swearing on your mother's grave that the world did not have teeth and wouldn't harm you made no difference. The hot and manly thrust of your sadomasochistic ambition went all for naught.

If I knew what I was feeling … One can't have nameless emotions, surely … They must eventually declare themselves – neither vague, nor trifling, nor tendered in a spirit of mockery. Surely …

‘Sansom, you wouldn't be calling me if it hadn't been taken as an insult. So white, male and so forth has insulted a black, female activist who works for his own party and is … substantial in mass as a person … which was ungallant … And is this true, anyway – what's your source?'

Sources … if one can trace things to their sources, they must surely then become identified, identifiable …

So is the source of my emotions my wife?

Ex-wife. She's my ex-wife.

That would be the important question. Does my, as yet, unclassified emotional disturbance derive from her, or has it flown in from elsewhere?

‘He was recorded doing it …? Well, isn't everyone? Isn't everyone now recorded while doing everything …? He at least wasn't overheard by a sober off-duty policeman of impeccable reputation, decorated former serviceman and tirelessly devoted to a number of charities …'

Jon ambled down Valerie's staircase as he spoke, its skewed angles marking it out as original. If anything lasted long enough, it got twisted.

Always makes you think you're falling, or about to.

And, as his telephone reception became exquisitely weak, he peered at his image, caught in the shine of the living-room door.
Original again – oak, two-panelled – polished by centuries of various substances until it had a deep and browny-goldy finish, the subtly uneven surface further enhancing the impression that it was a slab of very tranquil, well-aged liquid set up on end and then graced with a doorknob.

The one thing I miss about this place – the doors.

I can picture myself being desolate about the doors.

Although I'm not.

Emotions were like pine needles in your carpet – you'd think they were cleared and then another would work its way up and sting you, then another.

But you can look at a needle and see it for what it is. The bloody things are explicable.

His face, wavering in the sombre woodwork, was definitely grinning. He didn't look remotely annoyed.

And not bad for fifty-nine. Seen worse. Possibly. Any unbiased observer might be kind. Any kind observer might be … willing to look away.

His arms –
spidery –
were distorted, his body's long outlines flickering as he moved. But it wasn't disturbing.

I never truly got the benefit of being tall. And yet people say it's a good thing. I was told recently that it's good.

‘I was joking, Sansom … No, I was joking … I made the policeman up … He does not exist … He is a fiction…. You know about fiction … Audio, or video …? Magnificent. The Internet loves camera phones, where would we be without them … You know I can't help you.'

I don't want to help you, but I also can't. My loyal and effective service may not be inhibited by the taint of comprehensive commitment to any particular interest or philosophy. We don't even share a minister. Be your bloody age.

My dad would say that –
be your bloody age
. Another tall man, Dad – not a clue what to do with it, either.

First time I came back from school – home for the holidays – and he'd decided to be short around me. My own father. I made him stoop. That could never have been right. I should have said so. One can't, though, can one?

Jon slotted himself down the steps again, jogtrotting.

Is that what I feel? Rushed? Am I thinking of all of the everything I still have to do?

‘Sansom, you know that especially now I can't help you. And I have to make that very clear. If you are not satisfied with my response, I genuinely regret that, but there's no more I can do. By which I do mean precisely that there's no more I can do. This wouldn't alter if we were in the same room. And you shouldn't have texted me and I hope that you haven't emailed or that if you did, you bore the clarity of my position in mind.'

The Honourable gentleman currently under discussion is of a party and I cannot be of a party. The Honourable gentleman is subject to nervous difficulties, but that's none of my business in the sense that you require. The Honourable gentleman once made a moderately painless speech to an audience of which I was a member, that's all. The Honourable gentleman's dogged insistence that my subsequent presence on other occasions would ensure smooth sailing and the free flow of elegant locutions is based on a false assumption. He believes that every time he opens his mouth in public and precipitates a catastrophuck it's because I wasn't there. This is untrue. He doesn't fail because I'm never there, he fails because he always is.

‘To repeat, I can't help. I can't … But I can't. Particularly now. We're deep in the period of sensitivity and everyone has to be unimpeachably well balanced. Like a Toledo blade, as I used to be told. Acting as your Parliamentary Undersecretary of State's lucky gonk isn't being impartial, now is it …? We're in purdah. At least, I am. And I can't
just be there
when he makes obeisance before the press … I have my work to do … As a suggestion, it's untenable in the particular and in principle and as a request. And beyond which, if
he
gets a gonk they'll all want one.'

And since when did a Parliamentary Undersecretary of State get anything much beyond the headed stationery?

I am here to serve, of course, I am a servant … It becomes, though, difficult … It becomes, in an environment where
change-bunching
is a concept and we have to believe in and pander to such a thing as
the garden-fence effect
and
cascade
is deployed as a serious verb … It becomes difficult. I think I reached my tether, its end, became aware that I was tethered and did not like it, when I encountered my first
zero-based review
. I do not wish to be involved with the thing which is a
zero-based review
. Zero is an ugly word. The name of the Greek philosopher of all things lost to despair should be … Nemo Zero who lived in a burning barrel, close by the Abode of the Crows … I should mention him at some point – see if anyone admits they've never heard of him.

I think I should do that. I think so.

But then again, I can't hear myself think. On occasions.

And then again, I don't like it when I can. On occasions.

‘Sansom … Sansom … Sansom, would you like to explain yourself to my minister who is currently a little busy, what with that … that whole, what was it …? Yes, that whole upcoming general election distracting him from his usual devotion to your well-being and that of every other special advisor, no matter their department. Regards, by the way to your minister, I thought he did terribly well the other night and it was a tough situation for him.'

Always be nice about a special advisor's minister. Their minister is the nipple at which they suck – he, or even she, will bring out the mammal in them – and they can't help being fond.

The Mancunian is, perhaps, Sansom's minister's ugly and wet-brained child, the one they couldn't sell to the circus – which is to say, not to a circus other than the one he now calls home: not to a proper circus that insists on its staff having skills – like tumbling, or eating live rats. All of which is not to be pondered
.

‘Talk to him, to the Honourable Member … Then talk to him again … Don't talk to me … Talk to someone who
can
help you. Please. Not me. I'm someone who can't. Deep breaths, take deep breaths … I'm so sorry … Yes, you could ask my minister and if he were to tell me that I should assist, then I would try to see how we could do that.'

But he won't, because he isn't insane. I know there was something of a precedent set in Scotland, but purdah really should be purdah – I mean, it does matter a little, to democracy and so forth
.

‘No,
deep
breaths, Sansom.'

It had been a while since he'd hung up on somebody who was swearing.

It felt good.

He paused at another door. His reflection bowed slightly and flexed its knees.

He nodded to it, watchful, but it didn't take offence. He winked.

Some men have the face for that kind of thing. I don't.

And he did need to be gone now. The plants had been watered, trousers must be fetched, borrowed, purchased, the office was … it waited. Things waited.

It's only my servant's nature, my servility, that means I'm here at all.

Val must have encountered –
have come across, have had … there really were no verbs that didn't end up leering once you'd put them in a sentence with Valerie –
she must have been the innocent acquaintance of some other person who knew how to fill up a jug with water and then empty it out at horticultural locations, repeat as necessary. There had been no call for him to be the one. She'd made it his responsibility on purpose.

Because she knows it teases.

He trotted his way down to the hall, switched on her alarm, then pulled open – with wonder, bliss, relief, something – her front door and stepped outside. Then he duly swung the impeccably painted wood, pushed it back into its impeccably painted frame. Her forbidding selection of locks were duly thrown, expensive levers operating as required. His phone rang again and he could almost take the small din as a fit celebration of departure.

And it wasn't Sansom.

And wasn't any other kind of pressure or disturbance.

Thank God. Or almost that.

‘He got me … Yes, Sansom got me, Pete … I'm sure. I'm sure … Yes. He should know better. But they never do. And we're an anachronistic, smug elite when they don't need us and we should all be working in Croydon, what few of us are left, and then when they want us … Would be what I might say, but I don't and didn't. But one could.' It was Pete Tribe from the office. A promising man,
Peter. ‘And he shouldn't have bothered you, Peter … He shouldn't have bothered me. I've just got rid of him – one can always hope – and I'm on my way in and don't worry about it, you did the right thing – only I have to change my trousers, so I need to go back home … No, no … Of course … We don't have someone with a remit to provide gangsta slash hip-hop references in support of the notion that he was in some manner … The trousers? No, I was at home last night, but now I'm not … No, not that … I'm in Chiswick … At Val's … No, she's not here … No, it's … No … I'll be in as soon as I can … No, not that … Yes, bye.'