‘Jimmy told a good one this evening before you came in: how he lost a field of silage earlier this summer. How did you manage that, I asked. Jimmy grinned and said, I left it to God and God left it to me and between the two of us we lost it, that’s how.
We laugh and stand there a moment and, with nothing more to be said, we open the back door and turn into the house.
So we’ve made it to Christmas and we’re walking the beach beyond the town. This is our new health regimen: exercise and diet. Santa’s brought me a new pair of boots and they’re stiff on my feet so I’m breaking them in over even ground. It’s a beautiful day, one of those clear sharp days that thrills you deep in the bone, makes you feel properly alive. Our goal is half a mile distant, a small stream running to the sea, marked out by a large rock; overhead a watery sun is doing its best.
‘Look who’s coming,’ Anthony says.
There’s a lot of people on the beach: kids playing football; couples; dogs. Up ahead a young fella is leaning back, taking the strain from a huge kite high above. It looks like nice work – even at this distance I can feel the draw in his arms, the pull in the small of his back.
‘Uncle T, out walking as well.’
I see him now, coming towards us with his hands thrust into the pockets of his jacket. Another moment and he spots us.
‘It’s no use standing up, lads,’ he calls cheerily, ‘you have to keep walking, you won’t do it standing up.’
We shake hands and wish him happy Christmas and he’s in flying form. His family is down for the holiday, his two girls with husbands and kids and his only son back from Jersey. We talk and make plans to meet up later that night for a drink. After a few moments we move off in opposite directions.
‘What the hell’s a stent, anyway?’ I ask, ‘do you know what it is?’
Anthony nods. ‘Yes, he showed me a leaflet in the house. You wouldn’t believe it; it’s like shuttering in your arteries, keeping it open.’
‘That’ll put an end to John Jameson.’
Anthony looks at me like I’ve said something stupid. ‘He doesn’t care, he told me himself. He said life is too sweet, his family is reared, there’s just himself and herself; it’s not too much now to look after his health. He’s talking of getting a taxi licence.’
‘He can’t drive a truck but he can drive a taxi, how does that work out?’
‘Fucked if I know, some sort of insurance thing, I think.’
We turn at the rock and put the low sun behind us. Now we’re going in the right direction. The summer before he died, myself and my father were on this same beach together. It was a Sunday – it had to be or we wouldn’t have been here. I was after coming out of the water, drying in the sun, and we were talking about something or other when, out of the blue, he challenges me to a sprint.
‘Come on,’ he says, ‘as far as the rock,’ his face keen with the sudden idea of it.
My heart sank. I was nineteen that summer and fitter than I’d ever been. I was playing senior football with the parish team and I’d had county trials earlier that year. He was forty-six and I didn’t want this challenge but what could I do? He took off his shoes and socks and rucked up the ends of his trousers and we stood side by side. He leaned forward then and called it: Ready, Steady, Go! He had eaten up two whole strides before I’d put a foot forward, running with a rigid, upright stride that carried him lightly over the sand, his elbows pumping, his shirt swelled out across his back. I surged off and drew beside him at the halfway mark, all my reluctance swept aside by the savage competitiveness that was my way in these things. I pulled ahead of him, one stride, and said now I’ll burn him off, fuck it. But that one stride was all I managed, not another inch, no matter how hard I pumped or how deep down I reached – not another inch. We drew up at the stream and he was breathless and laughing his head off, his face broad with glee. I couldn’t understand it at first but after a moment I thought I knew: he was glad, glad for both of us, glad I’d won and glad that he’d made more than a fight of it. I tried not to sound surprised.
‘I never knew you were that fast.’
He continued laughing and turned towards the sea, hauling in deep breaths. ‘Not running,’ he said, ‘handball was my game, doubles; myself and Peter Burns, we were never beaten.’
Six months later he would die in his bed, home after a few pints in the same pub Anthony would manage fifteen years later. He went to bed with the paper and sometime in the middle of that night our bedroom door burst open and our mother came through shouting, Get up, get up lads, there’s something wrong with daddy! I charged through the hall after my brother, into their bedroom, and saw him lying on his back, his face blue and him gasping for air. I turned back out of the room, pulled on my boots and jacket in the kitchen and set out into the pissing night to run the quarter of a mile into the town to get the doctor. When I got back he was dead.
I haven’t told Anthony any of this and I’m not going to tell him today. Someday yes, but not today. This is Christmas and today is about walking, keeping these dodgy hearts of ours ticking over; stories like that can hold for another time, for some night after hours when they’re really needed. Anthony’s mobile goes off in his pocket and he pulls it out and holds it to his ear.
‘Sound,’ he says, ‘about fifteen minutes.’ He turns to me. ‘Let’s speed it up, the dinner’s on the table.’
We pick up the pace for the final stretch, lengthening our stride and feeling the cold, sharp air reach down into the bottom of our lungs.
They came today, knocked on my door around mid-morning, and when I opened it they told me without any preamble that I was dead.
There they stood in the hallway, their bland interchangeable faces glowing in the half-light, these two men, these bearers of the worst possible news. And as I stood there I realized there was no doubting them; they already had a rooted, immovable presence and their open-shouldered stance blocked off the entire corridor. And yet I had no fear. On the contrary I found myself swept up in a sudden lightness of spirit that coursed through me, a blithe expansiveness of mood that had me inviting them into my flat. I stood back and motioned towards the sofa under the window where I might get a better look at my two visitors, these two sudden men.
They came as a pair – this much was immediately evident. Both wore suits and were clean-shaven and I guessed there was about ten years between them; the older one, the heavier one who had given me the bad news in the hall, I judged to be around my own age; his partner, I put in his late twenties. Both appeared to have mastered the paradox of establishing a solid, physical presence while at the same time effacing any specific detail in which this presence might be grounded. They were clean-shaven, they wore suits – that was as much as I would ever be able to say about them. And yet there was something of the comic double act, also, a complementary ease in the way they sat there, which convinced me I was about to witness one of those deft, professional routines that was no doubt worn smooth and seamless by much time and practice. And as I stood there gazing at them, I reflected that this was something new; I had not lived the sort of life that drew men in suits towards me; uniforms yes, suits no.
‘So,’ I said airily, ‘in what way am I dead? Spiritually perhaps, possibly metaphorically: what way exactly?’ I was in unexpectedly good form.
All promise of light comedy evaporated completely in the toneless delivery of the older man. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his voice came across like dry sand running in a pipe. ‘It would be a mistake to understand yourself dead in any partial, metaphorical or analogical sense,’ he began. ‘There is only one way in which someone is dead and that is literally, totally and absolutely. Such is the case with you at this very moment. And, I would advise, the sooner you dismiss all evidence which says otherwise, the sooner we will all be able to move on.’ He sat back and placed both his hands on his knees.
By rights a fit of laughter should have taken hold of me then. The ludicrousness of what he had just
said was verified in every atom of my being; in fact my whole circumstance at that particular moment could hardly have served a more vivid testimony to my life and its ongoing continuance. For starters there was this pain in my lower back, which throbbed warmly after I had slept awkwardly on it; the apple I had eaten for breakfast had lodged a nagging piece of itself between my teeth and would not come loose; not ten minutes ago I had hung up the phone on my girlfriend and earlier still, I remembered, I had made plans to meet a friend for a drink that night; my leg … I caught myself on abruptly. That I had been pushed so easily into this survey of myself and my circumstances says something of my visitors’ confidence in themselves and my own aptness for confusion. I actually found myself stammering and asking for some further evidence to support their outlandish claim.
The older of the two went to the table and spread across it a series of pale documents; he did this with such economy of movement that it flummoxed totally whatever understanding I might have had of them. To my bewildered gaze there appeared to be a series of spiralling figures and indices, endless columns of data and other graduated observations, all waxing and waning and spiralling across six or seven sheets of ruled paper … Somewhere amid these convulsive figures I thought I glimpsed something of a life’s ineffable fleetness but I could not be sure of this. Before I had grasped the idea clearly, I was distracted by the younger man who, till now, had busied himself looking out the window. Now he turned to me with a wan smile.
‘It could be worse,’ he said evenly, ‘it could be a lot worse.’
He gazed round at the flat, appearing to turn a full three-sixty without moving his feet and as he did so I had an unnerving sense of displacement; it was as if I was seeing not just the room with his eyes, but also the life it inscribed. I found myself acutely ashamed of the worn furniture and general shabbiness of the whole place. There did not appear to me a surface or appliance that was not stained or grimy in one way or another. Indeed, it appeared to me as if the entire flat was held together by stains and scuffmarks. Everything looked unspeakably dreary in the grey morning light and I had no doubt but that it smelled, also. What sort of a life was responsible for that kind of shabbiness, what sort of life passed through these rooms and left behind such filth? I realized that the question was not properly my own or wholly rhetorical but that it belonged to the younger man at the window. It was as if I was hearing his voice inside my head; his dull reproving tone. ‘Look at yourself,’ he was saying, ‘pushing forty and nothing to show for it. No wife or child, nothing completed or finished; one project after another aborted or abandoned in one fashion or other; nothing but false starts, revisions and amendments. Furthermore, there is neither family nor loved ones to grieve for you.’ He spread his hands wide in a gesture of finality. ‘You’ve had your chance and you’ve wasted it and when all is said and done you will be no great loss, least of all to yourself.’
Being spoken to like this in your own kitchen should rouse an ordinary man to a fit of righteousness. But it seemed that their power over me was so absolute I was completely incapable of any proper response to his charge. And so smooth was their dismantling of my psyche that I began to suspect there was something uncanny about them both. Now, what had appeared at first to be a deft routine with all the sheen and polish of professional repetition, might in reality be the seamless, unhesitant unity of a single being. The sinuous ease with which they picked up each other’s thoughts and this tendency of one to absent himself in the background while the other spoke had me wondering if, in fact, these two men were not conjoined in some mysterious way beyond ordinary comprehension.
After dwelling uneasily on this for what must have been several moments, I was brought back to the situation in hand by the giddy realization that, incredibly, I was being offered a job of some sort – or, more accurately, I was being recruited to some sort of organization. The older of the two was now addressing me and had begun wooing me with a distinctly backhanded compliment. The thrust of it was that while he recognized I had proved to be an indifferent living man, he had no doubt, and indeed some confidence, that I would prove to be a very good dead man, whatever that might be. Indeed, he went so far as to say that, contrary to all appearances, my life had not been a complete waste of time and that, in more than one instance, it had served evidence that hinted strongly that I might be the very man they were looking for.
What evidence, I wanted to know.
‘Your politics, for instance,’ the younger one said.
I guffawed and shook my head happily, glad to have any small advantage over them – nothing was too trivial at this stage.
‘I have no politics,’ I declaimed stoutly. ‘I have never voted nor do I have any party affiliations.’
‘We know that,’ the younger one said, ‘but you have taken up several reasoned positions. Your attitude to Cuba and North Korea, your implacable opposition to totalitarianisms, left or right …’
I guffawed once more, now gathering in confidence. ‘And I get a prize for that? Since when did drink-talk become a “position” or indeed “implacable opposition”, for that matter?’
‘It all becomes part of the wider configuration. There was also your support for the second invasion of Iraq; your heroic vigil in front of Sky News was noted. And there was that incident at the funeral of your friend’s father. Your defence of coalition forces was noted and appreciated.’
‘What defence?’
‘You had a series of bitter exchanges with a young German woman. Several people commented on it – it soured the atmosphere of the gathering; eventually, a friend of the deceased had to separate the two of you.’
I remembered the funeral vividly. It had happened over six months ago, the father of a friend dying after a long illness. I had taken the early train and arrived at the funeral service flustered and regretting the Death’s Head T-shirt I had pulled on so hurriedly that morning. And later that evening, sure enough, I seemed to have some dim recollection of a heated argument with someone whose constant refrain of ‘People like you make me laugh’ had made me especially angry. I remembered it being late at night and that I had stood with my back braced against the bar for fear I might fall over while the thread of what passed for my argument unravelled hopelessly … But, of course, it may have been somewhere else, some other gathering entirely.
‘Furthermore,’ the young man was saying, ‘while keeping a close eye on their development you have prudently withheld judgment on recent events in Venezuela. This caution is to your credit.’
Till now the naked, irrefutable fact of their presence in my flat had blinded me to the obvious question of who these men were and who had sent them. Now it seemed certain to me that they had come from the New World and were probably two field agents from one of those security agencies that had performed so abysmally in recent years. They looked like security agents and they behaved as I imagined security agents should behave. And yet it seemed incredible to me that there were men in that distant jurisdiction, important men working in remote areas of government who had evidently taken an interest in me and my life and had despatched these two to sound me out. It seemed not only incredible but also hopelessly trivial, evidence that someone somewhere had been sidetracked. Nevertheless, there were those suits and those haircuts and those mechanically arch enunciations … I made an effort to concentrate harder.
‘There are certain things we don’t know,’ the older man admitted, ‘certain limits to our knowledge.’
‘Yes.’
‘Gaps,’ the younger man clarified.
‘Gaps?’
‘Yes.’
‘We want to commission a report,’ the older one elaborated. ‘There are clear gaps in our knowledge of certain things and as such they present a very real security risk. The man who would fill these gaps with accurate accounts and reasonable guesstimates would have the entire world beholden to him.’
‘What sort of report?’
‘A reconnaissance report. You would be fully brie
fed and equipped and pointed at the target; certain back channels would then be open to you. Our specific interest is in scale drawings, schematics, architects’ blueprints if at all possible. You would be asked to make note of the outlying topography and whatever early-warning systems are in place. Certain evaluations would also be helpful – estimates of manpower, ordnance and readiness for conflict …’ He continued on in this vein for some time and as he did so an overwhelming sense of fatigue took hold of me, a dry falling sensation as if some ashen sediment were settling down through my limbs and torso.
Had he not eventually mentioned something about being put on a generous retainer he would have lost my attention completely. Now he assured me he had access to limitless funds but stressed that it was in everyone’s interest that my presence be buried in the deep end of some discretionary budget – that way I would be shielded from all oversight and accountability. Furthermore, everything about me would be deniable, all my actions and whereabouts, my very existence. In the unlikely event of my capture they would deny all knowledge of me and I would leave no trace whatsoever. Looking at them, I did not doubt from their blank faces that these men could arrange all this.
‘It sounds dangerous.’
‘You can take our word that for someone like you it presents no danger at all.’
Why I should take their word or anything else they had to offer was something I never thought to question.
‘This target, what sort of a thing is it? Is it a place or a thing?’
‘It is both a place and a thing.’
‘It’s a compound or an installation of some sort?’
They shook their heads in unison and said that they could not be more specific at this time; all information from here on would be available on a need-to-know basis. I understood. They were right. I did not need to know: certainly not right now, and maybe not ever.
Now that I had so much to think about, I was keen they should leave and, as if sensing my patience was at an end, they began gathering up their papers; the older of the two handed me a card on which there was a telephone number. The atmosphere in the room now was perfectly amiable, as if some difficult piece of business had been settled to the benefit of everyone.
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