A Very Persistent Illusion

by L. C. Tyler

  ‘No,’ I say, in the slow and clear way you do when speaking to an idiot. ‘Was he friendly?’

  ‘Funny you should ask that. I found him a bit more distant than you led me to believe he might be. Once or twice I had to remind him to call me George rather than Professor Magwitch. But he was very polite. Very proper. Say what you like about journalists qua journalists, but Digby’s a real gent. I imagine he went to the right sort of school. I must ask him where.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘Well, since he’s a mate of yours, Chris, pretty much everything. I certainly left him in no doubt about Dan Smith.’

  ‘Precisely what did you say?’ I have my fingers crossed on both hands, but it’s not as reliable a method of avoiding disaster as you would think.

  ‘Well, low IQ, no qualifications, only working because he’s not bright enough to be a benefit fraudster, almost certainly been a bully all his life. Probably an Arsenal supporter.’

  ‘I’m an Arsenal supporter,’ I point out.

  ‘There you are then,’ George says cheerfully. ‘He seemed proud to have had parents who beat him within an inch of his life when he was a kid – thought a quick slap was the solution to most problems. A wife beater too, I would think. Should never have been allowed near a care home, let alone permitted to work unsupervised for long periods.’

  Excellent.

  ‘Benefit fraudster? Wife beater? Did you actually say any of that? Please tell me that you didn’t.’ I’m pretty sure I know the answer, but it’s worth asking the question.

  There is a low chuckle down the line. ‘Maybe. I really can’t remember now. If it helps, I definitely didn’t say he was an Arsenal supporter. I also explained carefully how the medical evidence had stacked up. Anyway, Spain’s a friend, isn’t he? He won’t quote things that I obviously intended to be off the record. He’s hardly likely to stitch you up, is he?’

  Of course, George Magwitch is right. Theoretically, there is always a chance that Digby Spain is not going to stitch me up. Because there is a theoretical chance of even the most unlikely things.

  5

  Neuburg, Danube Valley, November 1619

  The waiter wiped his sleeve across his nose and knocked on the door. ‘Breakfast!’ he announced. The door swung open and a bearded face looked down at him.

  ‘Breakfast, good sir,’ said the waiter cheerfully, ever mindful of the fact that there was still a chance of a tip. ‘Chicken and our fine white bread.’

  ‘Is it as bad as last night’s supper?’ asked Descartes.

  The waiter pondered. ‘What did you have for supper?’

  ‘Beef.’

  ‘No, it’s not as bad as that,’ he conceded.

  He crossed the room and set the platter of chicken and bread down on the table.

  ‘How’s the old philosophy going, then?’ the waiter asked conversationally. ‘Now that I’m a philosopher myself, I have a professional interest.’

  ‘I’ve just proved the existence of God,’ said Descartes.

  ‘That’s nice,’ said the waiter, setting a knife down by the food and arranging a cleanish napkin on the other side. ‘Would you like beer with that?’

  ‘Don’t you want to know how?’

  ‘I suppose it could come in useful,’ said the waiter. ‘Is it quick, or should I take a seat?

  ‘Take a seat. Now, yesterday we had reached a point where we doubted everything except our own existence.’

  The waiter put his hand up.

  ‘Yes?’ sighed Descartes, knowing that intelligent questions at this point were not likely.

  ‘We didn’t doubt doubt,’ said the waiter.

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ said Descartes.

  ‘Do you? Carry on then,’ said the waiter magnanimously.

  ‘But there are some things, even then, about which we can have some certainty.’

  ‘H—’ began the waiter.

  ‘No, not sodding ham,’ snapped Descartes. He paused for a moment, took a deep breath and continued, enunciating every word carefully. ‘Let us consider a triangle. Even if I doubt the reality of material objects, it must be true that, defining a triangle as lines joining three points in space, the triangle must have three sides and three angles.’

  ‘That’s why it’s called a triangle,’ said the waiter helpfully.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Descartes. ‘And I do not need to see a physical triangle to know that its internal angles will add up to one hundred and eighty degrees.’

  ‘And that’s true of squares?’

  ‘Yes, except it’s three hundred and sixty degrees, obviously.’

  ‘And pentagons?’

  ‘Yes. Except it’s five hundred and forty degrees.’

  ‘And hexagons.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And—’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes – before we have to consider sixty-seven-sided polygons – yes, all geometrical figures. It is easier to be certain about abstractions than it is about physical objects.’

  ‘I don’t know what an abstraction is,’ said the waiter.

  ‘You are very fortunate,’ said Descartes. ‘Just think of it as . . . an idea. Even with physical objects, however, it is possible to imagine only things that are based on what we have ourselves seen.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ said the waiter.

  ‘All right, imagine something that is totally unlike anything you have seen.’

  ‘Very well, I am imagining a monster with claws like a lion, legs like a bull, a body like a sheep and a head like . . . like . . . another lion. I’ve never seen that. Not in Neuburg anyway.’

  ‘But you have seen a lion and a sheep and a bull.’

  ‘Granted.’ The waiter gave the matter further thought. ‘What about a monster with a body like a sheep and a head like a dragon and a beer gut like the cook’s? I’ve never seen a dragon.’

  ‘And what is a dragon like?’

  ‘It’s like a big lizard,’ said the waiter, realizing at once that he had been caught in some sort of philosopher trap. ‘Yes, I agree, I have seen a lizard.’

  ‘Now consider me,’ said Descartes. ‘I am imperfect.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said the waiter, unwilling to offend a guest who might still wish to show his appreciation of good service.

  ‘I must be imperfect, because I have doubts. But nevertheless, I can imagine perfection, as an abstraction. Perfection must therefore exist. But since my finite mind cannot conceive this infinite thing, it must exist outside me. And this perfection we call . . .’

  ‘God?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But that only proves he might exist.’

  ‘No, it proves he does exist. If we define God as a perfect being, then a perfect being must have the property of existence, or he would not be perfect.’

  ‘And that’s it? The proof? All of it?’

  ‘More or less. I need to work on it a bit, obviously.’

  ‘And is that the end of the argument?’

  ‘No,’ said Descartes. ‘Clearly a perfect God would not deceive me about reality. So I need not doubt my senses any longer.’

  ‘You wouldn’t call that argument a bit circular – your certainty that God exists depending, as it does, on God’s assurance to you that your senses don’t deceive you?’

  ‘No.’

  The waiter got to his feet. ‘Good – so we both exist. Well, I’m glad we’ve cleared that one up, then. That leaves you free to eat and me to serve you. Did you say you wanted a tankard of beer or not?’

  ‘Is it as bad as the wine?’

  ‘Did the wine keep you up all night with the shits?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’d stick to the wine then.’

  ‘I hope you realize,’ said Descartes, as the waiter turned to go, ‘that you have been present at one of the turning points of western philosophy?’

  The waiter closed the door carefully. ‘I doubt that,’ he said.

  6

  No Dater />
  It is not uncommon to lose one’s belief in God. At what point, I wonder, did I lose my belief in reality?

  It can’t have happened suddenly. These things don’t, do they? No fiery writing in the sky: ‘It’s all in your imagination, Chris.’ No unexpected text message from the Holy Ghost. Just a growing sense of unease.

  Had I lived a hundred years ago, I might have struggled to reconcile a benign deity and a world in which children starved to death before they were a year old. I might have wondered about God’s Purpose. I might have concluded that God at least knew what was going on and he would let me in on the joke when he thought fit. But since I was born into the second half of the twentieth century, as part of the first generation to understand the term ‘virtual reality’, my view of life was necessarily different. If this world did not make sense on its own, then surely it was because we were seeing only part of the picture. And the other half of the picture did not need to be God. The ‘reality’ that we experience could have been produced by any programmer with the right software and a broadband connection. It was true that nobody within this reality had the skills or the kit, but which was more likely: software slightly more powerful than the PlayStation, or an omnipotent, omnipresent God, virgin birth, water turned into wine and so on and so on? No contest.

  I started wandering round the streets looking at people and thinking: ‘Yes, very lifelike, but do you exist? Had one of them answered my unspoken thoughts by turning and replying: ‘Of course I do, Chris,’ then I would have been onto their game like a shot. But they simply passed by on their programmed course, giving nothing away.

  Then, other days – most days really – I would think: No, maybe it’s real after all. Maybe there’s no God and no other reality beyond this one. Maybe this is it. Maybe we just are.

  I really needed to discuss this with somebody – preferably somebody that I was reasonably certain existed. I tried talking to Dave about it one evening but he just said . . .

  7

  Another Pub, 27 April this Year

  ‘. . . Sorry, Chris, that’s a bit too hypothetical to take in at this stage in the evening.’

  We are sitting in a pub just off Great Portland Street. He’s been there a bit longer than I have and so is slightly less capable of rational thought.

  ‘But Descartes doubted reality,’ I say.

  ‘No,’ says Dave, prodding my chest with a damp beer-mat, ‘Descartes postulated that our senses might deceive us, but only as a step towards proving that they did not.’ For a fat drunken slob, Dave knows quite a lot about philosophy. He really does. Dave claims, in fact, to have a degree in philosophy, but he’s never said how many cornflake-packet tops he had to send in to get it.

  ‘What about Berkeley?’ I say.

  ‘Berkeley questions whether a tree falling in an uninhabited forest, with nobody to hear it fall, makes a noise. He did not refute the authenticity of our existence.’

  ‘What about The Matrix?’

  ‘It’s a film,’ says the holder of a genuine degree in philosophy. ‘I missed most of it because the activities of the couple in the row in front of me were much more entertaining. Groundhog Day, in my view, raises far more complex questions about the nature of reality. Whose round is it?’

  ‘Yours,’ I say.

  Instead of springing to his podgy little legs and fetching me a nice cold Tiger, Dave sits there for a bit, looking at me, and then says: ‘How’s Virginia?’

  ‘OK,’ I say cautiously.

  ‘How’s Lucy?’

  ‘OK,’ I say again. If Dave is trying to take this anywhere, I’m not planning to help him on his way.

  ‘You really need to sort your life out,’ he says.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘No, Dave, I do not need to sort my life out, because my life is fine, thank you very much.’

  ‘And Virginia’s life?’

  ‘I’ve no complaints.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant either.’

  ‘Sorry, David, what is your point exactly?’

  ‘I think Virginia deserves better. One day you’re off to Brighton with her – the next you’re snuggling down with Lucy to watch old videos . . .’

  ‘Lucy didn’t show up,’ I say. I hadn’t been planning to tell Dave this, of course. ‘So nobody snuggled down with anyone. I hate to disappoint you but I spent Thursday night with a good book. There was some mix-up over dates. We’re going to do it some other time.’

  ‘Then sort yourself out before you do.’

  ‘Do you know?’ I say. ‘You’re getting old and boring. It’s the same thing all the time.’

  ‘Like your jokes,’ he says. ‘Confucius he say: “I tell joke once, you laugh, joke good. I tell same joke second time, you laugh, joke very good. I tell joke third time, you laugh, you moron.”’

  Like I say, Dave’s a red-hot philosopher.

  I left the pub early, and not just because it was my round.

  It was raining slightly: the sort of gentle and persistent drizzle that makes you feel stupid wandering around with an umbrella, but which makes you feel damp if you don’t. I should never have started the discussion with Dave about reality. It just reminds me about . . . well, stuff in general. Nothing I’ve got plans to tell you or anyone else about.

  It was starting to get dark. The shops had closed, apart from the small newsagents that you get all over London, selling papers and sweets and booze and ibuprofen twenty-four hours a day. Inside the restaurants the lights were on and, if you slowed down a little as you passed, you could see the people inside, seated in twos and threes and fours, ordering their food, sipping their wine with a thoughtful air, talking, happy. If all of this existed only in my mind, then each little scene had been constructed with great care – the diners, the waiters, the menus – all put there just so that I could view them briefly as I passed by. A bus drew up close by, sucked in a gaggle of passengers from the bus stop, and headed off towards South London. Or so it claimed on the illuminated sign on the front. Obviously, once out of my sight, it could just have vanished in a puff of smoke, to re-emerge only when I needed to be conscious of it again.

  The rain was falling heavily and just a bit too realistically. I turned up my coat collar and quickened my pace towards the tube station.

  Dave was presumably still sitting comfortably in the pub, finishing his beer. Of course, he was right in a way about Virginia and Lucy. I did need to do something about them. Assuming that they all exist, of course.

  Assuming that any one of them exists.

  * * *

  I’ve been back in my flat for about fifteen minutes when the phone rings. It’s Virginia’s father.

  ‘Chris?’ he says. ‘Hugh here.’

  I confirm my identity (name, rank and number – ha, ha) and ask what I can do for him.

  ‘It’s the Minden regiments piece,’ he says. ‘I was wondering whether to concentrate on the battle or on the regiments themselves. I’d like your advice.’

  I give him my views and also a possibly useful reference in Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That about continuing links between the regiments.

  He thanks me and, for a moment, I wonder if he has just phoned up to flatter me that I genuinely know something he doesn’t – to make me feel better about myself. It is the sort of thing that Hugh would do. The memory of Virginia kneeling in the sand, helping reconstruct the sandcastle, suddenly comes back to me. There’s a link between these two unrelated events, an invisible thread that joins it all together.

  The other thought that comes back to me is that Virginia’s mother thinks he has a Woman stashed away somewhere. If so, good for Hugh, but I doubt it somehow.

  ‘If I think of anything else, I’ll let you know,’ I say.

  ‘Thanks,’ he says.

  Then the subject of conversation does a quick left turn. ‘Did you see Virginia yesterday?’ he asks in an oddly detached way.

  ‘No,’ I say, ‘she was at that work thing,’ Doesn’t she tell her father anything? Then, f
or the first time, it strikes me that I really know nothing at all about the ‘work thing’ either. That is the only description Virginia has ever given me of it. I haven’t bothered to ask for details.

  ‘It’s just . . .’ he begins. There is a pause during which I can hear him thinking, ‘I don’t want to worry you in the slightest,’ because that’s the sort of thing that Hugh thinks all the time, bless him. ‘It’s just that she usually phones us on Sunday evening and she didn’t. I can’t get her this evening either and wondered if maybe she was with you.’

  ‘No, she’s not here,’ I say, not worried.

  ‘She’s always working late,’ he says.

  ‘We all do,’ I say. ‘That’s how things are these days.’

  ‘Not for me.’ He chuckles. ‘Not since I retired. You should try it. In the meantime, don’t work too hard, and thanks again for the advice on Royal Welch Fusiliers.’

  ‘Happy birthday for tomorrow,’ I say.

  We hang up – I in Islington and he in Horsham – and go about our business. I check my copy of Goodbye to All That and find I have completely misremembered the quote, which is actually about another battle entirely. For a moment I consider phoning Hugh back but then I realize that he’s not planning to use the quote anyway. The call was about Virginia. He’s worried and there’s something he’s being careful not to tell me. And this is odd because, apart from the odd fancy woman, Hugh has no secrets from anyone. Not from me, not from Virginia. None at all.

  * * *

  I’ve got an important meeting at the Society today; so I am smartly dressed in my new leather jacket, simple but very expensive white T-shirt, classic jeans and Tod’s loafers. No socks.

  But, first, I need to catch Jon.

  ‘Jon,’ I say, ‘this Digby Spain thing . . .’

  ‘Nothing to worry about, Chris,’ he says. ‘No contact with him for ages.’

  ‘But what do you think he was trying to get out of you?’

  ‘Just George Magwitch’s contact details.’