A Very Persistent Illusion

by L. C. Tyler

  I turn to my emails. I have been sent one hundred and two over the weekend. One hundred and two. Don’t these people have lives? Evidently not.

  I hate Mondays.

  But at least on this particular Monday I have lunch with Lucy to look forward to (good) and am meeting Fat Dave for a drink after work (good-ish). I wonder whether they are also, at this moment, looking forward to seeing me. I find it difficult to imagine any of them when I am not there. Of course, I tell myself that somewhere out there they are alive and doing the usual mundane things, starting their own Monday mornings. Somewhere out there the Queen is alive and doing her mundane things, starting her Monday morning. Somewhere out there the Prime Minister is alive and doing something, starting his Monday morning. I know that in the past twenty-four hours the Prime Minister must have eaten approximately three meals, visited the toilet (say) six times, cleaned his teeth at least twice, picked his nose surreptitiously . . . and yet I have great difficulty visualizing any of it. Dave will have cleaned his teeth less and picked his nose more, but in all other respects I have the same problem with him. If I were told that, once out of my sight, he was put away in a box for safekeeping until I needed him again, is that any less bizarre than the idea that he has a responsible job with Camden Council and is allowed to make actual decisions? I think not. No, really, I think not.

  Nine thirty. Let’s get Monday started then.

  * * *

  There are several good reasons for weekly team meetings:

  a) They are a type of feudal homage paid by my staff to me because, though they all hate and resent the meetings, I can command them to be there. I like that.

  b) They enable me to consolidate my power base in the Great Contest with Putrid Passmore for the post of Deputy Secretary.

  c) They allow me to communicate, encourage, exhort, raise or lower morale and so on and so forth, to the extent that seems advisable and good to me at any given time.

  ‘OK, boys and girls,’ I say, leaning back in my chair. ‘Let’s see what delights await us this week.’ The four of them smile, as they are contractually obliged to do when I say anything that they think that I think might be funny. ‘First,’ I continue genially, ‘did you all get my email on job plans?’

  They all look blank.

  ‘The email on job plans?’ I repeat, as if to a group of elderly and rather dim aunts.

  ‘Did you press SEND?’ asks Narinder. ‘Do you remember last time you pressed SAVE and . . .’

  I’m sure I hear Jon snigger but when I look in his direction he is stony faced and flicking though his diary, one eyebrow slightly raised. He is wearing a cream shirt and a loosely knotted paisley tie. The shirt is perfectly ironed, which is something that happens to you when you are married. (I have a good stock of non-iron shirts.)

  ‘OK,’ I say, ‘if none of you got my email, then clearly it is some sort of general system fault. I’ll resend it later. In the meantime, let me summarize Humph’s words of wisdom on job plans . . .’

  ‘Humph?’ asks Lucy brightly. She is keen and wishes to learn, as the young of most species are and do.

  ‘He means Roger,’ says Narinder. ‘The Secretary. Chris refers to him as Humph.’

  ‘Everybody calls him Humph,’ I say.

  ‘No, Chris,’ says Jon, ‘only you call him Humph.’

  ‘Why?’ asks Lucy. She is wearing a very tight, baby-pink cashmere sweater that, frankly, ought to be illegal, and I am struggling to focus on her words.

  ‘Because of his resemblance to Sir Humphrey Appleby,’ I explain patiently.

  ‘Who?’ asks a voice from just above the pink cashmere sweater.

  ‘You’re too young to remember,’ says Jon, who is certainly old enough, and (I notice) starting to go a bit grey. That too happens to you when you get married.

  ‘Yes Minister,’ I explain.

  Jon nods. ‘Sir Humphrey was the Permanent Secretary. Jim Hacker was the Minister.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Lucy. But she still hasn’t a clue what any of us are on about.

  ‘I’ll show you the videos some time,’ I offer. ‘I have every episode on DVD.’

  ‘Oh, it was a television programme then?’

  ‘Moving onwards,’ I say with a broad smile to all, ‘Jon, what is in your diary this week?’

  I lean even further back in my chair, not listening to the series of rather dull tasks that Jon has in store for him, but wondering which evening I should suggest to Lucy for her and her tight cashmere sweater to view one of the nation’s best-loved political comedies. I know that Virginia is tied up on Thursday, so Thursday it may well be. We’ll obviously need to drink plenty of alcohol while we watch. I’ll get in a bottle or two of Chardonnay.

  I realize that the room has gone silent and that everyone is looking at me. ‘Thanks, Jon,’ I say, re-entering the real world. ‘That was every bit as interesting as usual.’ I pause to show this remark was quite funny, but only Fatima smiles, and she clearly does not understand what the joke was supposed to be. She never does. ‘Anything you need help from me with?’ I add, to show that I am really supportive, caring, and so on and so forth.

  Jon sighs and shakes his head. ‘Only, as I said, Chris, it would be good if you could get the IT people to fix that software for us. I’ve tried, but they’re not listening to me. Maybe they’ll do it if you talk to them.’

  ‘Ah, yes, that,’ I say, closing my eyes for a moment and clasping my hands, as if in prayer. ‘Thank you, God. The useless-database project. Another screw-up by Corporate Services and another nail in the coffin of Putrid Passmore’s hopes to be Deputy.’

  ‘I’d be happy just to have the software fixed quickly,’ says Jon, ‘if that’s OK with you, Chris.’

  ‘I’ll speak to Putrid Passmore,’ I say.

  ‘That’s Brindley Passmore,’ says Jon, turning to Lucy. ‘Director of Corporate Services. And no, Chris, everyone does not call him that. Nor in fact did you before they announced this new Deputy post.’

  ‘Anything else?’ I ask tartly. One of the rules of weekly team meetings is that only I can score points.

  ‘Yes,’ says Jon, swivelling in his chair, the better to address us all, ‘I may as well report, as your union rep, that we have finished negotiating for private healthcare cover for all staff. You can now all fall sick without fear of having to cross the threshold of an NHS hospital.’ Jon smiles at us. Pretty well everyone who takes the Society exams, and pretty well everyone who is a member of the Society, works or has worked in the National Health Service. Jon too can make jokes.

  ‘Couldn’t you have got us free gym membership?’ I ask, winking at Lucy. I don’t go to the gym personally, but I’d rather like people to think I might be in there pumping iron from time to time. ‘I mean, private health insurance is great when you think you might need to replace a hip or two, or get checked out for dementia, but the younger people here are not going to find it such a great attraction.’

  ‘We carried out a survey of all staff,’ Jon begins, running fingers through the greying hair, but I dismiss him and the whole boring subject with a wave of my hand.

  ‘Moving on,’ I say brightly. And I call on Narinder to tell us about his plans for the week, because I have the power to make him do that.

  * * *

  ‘Still here?’ asks Humph (as everybody calls him). ‘Your colleagues all seem to have gone home.’ He stands, a little stiffly – almost shyly – at the doorway of my office. He is unsure if he is disturbing important work, and I am not planning to tell him that he isn’t. He is, as usual, dressed in a pinstriped suit (a grey one today) and some stripy tie that will tell the initiated which school or college he was at back in the Dark Ages. He is much too polite to enter my sanctum uninvited. He looks tired. They say he’s always in at seven thirty, though I’ve noticed some days lately he hasn’t been in at all. He is usually the last to leave, anyway. He needs a deputy. Let’s be specific – he needs me as his deputy.

  ‘I’m meeting somebody later,�
�� I say by way of explanation. I have told Dave I can’t get away until seven – people with important jobs obviously should not be seen, as Dave generally is, sitting around in a pub at three nanoseconds past five. As it happens, I am currently running an important Google search to see how many times I can find a reference to myself on the Internet. (Three so far – all Society press releases posted on our own website. Also a school in California and lots of people in Denmark with the same name as me, none of which counts.) Still, I am listed, therefore I exist.

  ‘Can I come in for a second?’ Humph asks.

  I kill Google with a furtive click of the mouse and say: ‘Be my guest.’ I narrowly avoid adding ‘Humph’.

  Humph enters, bringing with him just the faintest trace of some traditional English aftershave. ‘It’s George,’ he begins, twisting a gold cufflink thoughtfully.

  ‘Professor George Magwitch,’ I say, ‘distinguished, if somewhat outspoken, clinician. Faked his research and now hounded by the press over his dodgy evidence in the Smith case. Former Vice-President of this ancient and august Society.’

  Humph looks even more tired than before. ‘Distinguished clinician, cleared of unfounded accusations concerning his research and briefly criticized by the media for doing his duty and giving evidence against elder-abusing care-home staff and Dan Smith in particular. Former Vice-President of the organization that pays you, and don’t you forget it. That’s the one you’re probably thinking of.’

  ‘What’s he done now?’

  ‘Nothing, thank goodness. He’s been keeping his head down, looking after his patients and saving lives,’ says Humph. ‘But the criticisms made of him and the evidence he gave still rankle. He now wants to tell his side of the story to the press.’

  ‘Is that wise? They’ll have him for breakfast. The press have lost interest in the Smith case. If George talks, they’ll only dig out all the old press cuttings on the research. He’d be better off keeping quiet.’

  ‘No, it is not wise,’ says Humph, now fingering the stripy tie. (Red and blue. Balliol? As if I gave a monkey’s.) ‘It would be very brave, but not wise. Anyway, things have moved on. When Dan Smith was cleared of wrongdoing in spite of George’s expert testimony, it looked as if that was that. Smith probably had a case against the care home for wrongful dismissal, but it wasn’t our problem. Now it seems that Smith is being persuaded to report George to the GMC for giving an inaccurate and biased account of injuries suffered by the inmates – which the court has ruled were nothing to do with Smith and a lot to do with poor management of the home generally. Of course, his claim of bias is nonsense – George just reported factually on the injuries – and I’m sure the GMC will throw it out; but, nevertheless, this is not a good time for him to go shooting his mouth off to the press.’

  ‘He’ll speak his mind, as if he was living in a free country?’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘In his usual demure and uncontroversial manner?’

  Humph looks at me pointedly. Some things are too serious to joke about.

  ‘Precisely,’ he says ‘I have therefore advised the President, and the President has advised him against it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You can’t stop a doctor talking if he wants to talk. Strictly speaking neither his research nor his evidence in the Smith case were in his capacity as Vice-President, so publicly it’s none of our business. I can’t even argue that the GMC won’t like him talking about it, because as far as I know Smith hasn’t yet made a formal complaint to them. But if George stirs things up again, it’s unlikely the papers will fail to mention that he’s a former vice-president of ours, that he is still chair of one of our committees and that he’s the author of several of our highly regarded (up until now anyway) Guidelines. So, the President wishes to minimize the risk to the Society if he does decide to do the ill-advised thing. We can’t allow this to backfire. Frankly, if George is holed below the waterline and goes down, we’re screwed too.’

  ‘And not in a good way,’ I say.

  Humph just blinks at me this time and presses on: ‘We need a sympathetic journalist. I want you to fix him up with somebody, Chris – somebody who can be absolutely relied on to portray him as a kindly old buffer whose only aim in life is looking after defenceless old dears and who should be left to do so in peace until he chooses to retire to the Lake District with his golf clubs and his Platinum Clinical Excellence Award. A journalist who won’t dig out every stupid thing that George has said over the years. A journalist who will, preferably, write something so bland that nobody will even notice the piece has been written. It will require a certain amount of skill and diplomacy.’

  ‘I’m your man,’ I say. (Did I add ‘Humph’ this time, or did I just imagine I said it? Shit, I actually think I said it.) ‘Yes, Roger, I’m your man,’ I say again. Because that’s what I am. His man.

  ‘Do this and I shall owe you one,’ he says.

  I smile. The Deputy post is as good as mine. Oh, yes.

  ‘I’ll talk to Jon in the morning.’

  ‘No,’ says Humph. ‘I’m asking you personally because the fewer people who know, the better. If it all goes wrong – not that it will go wrong in your capable hands, Chris – I don’t want it to look as though we were trying to manipulate things. Because obviously the Society would not do any such thing. Discretion is essential.’

  ‘Then,’ I say, ‘this conversation never happened.’

  ‘What conversation?’ says Humph.

  He ought to be smiling as he says it. But he isn’t.

  * * *

  The low-ceilinged bar is crowded and humming, but I have no problem in spotting Fat Dave, who is waving to me from a table he has commandeered away to the right. It is easily the most awkward place he could have chosen to sit, and I make my way there with difficulty, clutching my ice-cold bottle of Tiger and trying not to jog the drinking arm of anyone bigger than me.

  ‘Ahoy there, Mr Christian!’ he calls out. He knows how this much-repeated greeting irritates me, so he yells it across half the room with an idiot-boy smirk on his face. I grimace. He grins back as if he’s just been appointed Resident Idiot of two whole villages. It’s what being best mates is all about.

  Fat Dave was at school with me – or to be more exact he went to the same school and his brother, Pete, was in my class. I don’t see much of his brother now, but I feel obliged to ask after him from time to time.

  ‘How’s Pete?’ I ask after the usual preliminary greetings and insults are over.

  ‘OK,’ he says evasively. Pete is a hotshot banker these days, according to Dave. I wonder if Dave is avoiding my question now because good old Pete is not doing so well after the last economic downturn. If so, then sorry but it’s not my problem, mate.

  ‘Just OK?’ I say. I suspect I am inadvertently grinning and so I try to look seriously concerned.

  ‘How’s the old three-in-a-bed sex situation?’ he asks, by way of reply.

  ‘OK,’ I say.

  ‘Just OK?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  He punches me on the arm, roughly where Virginia punched me on Saturday – harder than Virginia, but not as hard as she would have punched me if she knew that I was having this conversation with Dave. Obviously I am not having three-in-a-bed sex because:

  a) Virginia definitely wouldn’t (don’t bother to ask me how I know).

  b) I have never broached the subject with Lucy, even over lunch today.

  c) I have no plans to employ two tarts to make up the numbers.

  Dave however, to compensate for his own sad solitary existence, likes to imagine my life is full of glamour and sordid incident, in a way his isn’t. Dave lusts after Megan, who is Page Three material and therefore as much outside his class as Southend United are outside Real Madrid’s. Dave introduced her to me once at some Camden Council staff party. I almost fell over when I realized Dave was allowed to work in the same building as her. She is going out with Paul, who is obscenely rich, approxim
ately twice Dave’s height and has some appreciation of when you can and can’t break wind in public. Fat Dave is not in with the remotest chance. It would be cruel even to mention her name to him.

  ‘So, how’s the lovely Megan, then?’ I ask. ‘Still going out with that sad loser Paul?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, mainly into his Stella.

  ‘She’ll come to her senses, mate,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, but not with any chance of convincing the beer that this is true.

  ‘No, really,’ I say. ‘Get in there, my friend.’

  ‘Would it be fair to take her away from Paul, though?’

  I shrug. ‘When did we worry about what was fair?’

  ‘The problem with us,’ Dave says, finally looking up, ‘is that we’re just babe magnets.’

  ‘We can’t help it,’ I say.

  I have to stop the action at this point and explain that my conversations with Dave rest on the interesting premise that we are both irresistible Lotharios with the sex drive and stamina of a stud bull and a fin de siècle contempt for the norms of bourgeois society. I am not sure why, other than that maintaining this fiction is more interesting than talking about football all the time.

  ‘So, did you see the match?’ asks Dave.

  ‘A bit,’ I hedge. ‘On Sky.’

  He looks at me oddly. ‘A bit? What sort of Arsenal fan are you?’

  ‘Arsenal till I die, mate,’ I say. ‘Arsenal till I die. Cut me and I promise you I’ll bleed red. And even if I wasn’t there to cheer my lads on, it was a great result.’

  ‘Your lads? Bet you don’t even know the score,’ he says. He’s a season-ticket holder and I am just an occasional visitor to the Emirates Stadium. He does actually have the right to sneer.