The Child in Time

by Ian Mcewan

  It had been shown that there was deep concern among parents and educators about falling standards of behaviour and lack of civic responsibility among many elements of society, particularly the young. Upbringing clearly played an important part in this, and there was no doubt that parents in the past had been led astray by foolish and fashionable theories about childcare. There was a call for a return to common sense, and the Government was being asked to take a lead. This it was doing, and would continue to do, undeterred by the pathetic slurs, the irresponsible calumnies of its political opponents.

  The tremulous voice of the Leader of the Opposition was failing to penetrate the loyal shouting and foot-stamping when Stephen snapped the set off. The Home Secretary, who had never been popular with the Prime Minister, would be writing his letter of resignation. The Official Commission on Childcare had received an encoded death sentence. It was tidy work, impressive. Stephen stared into the aluminium latticework of the loudspeaker and marvelled at his own innocence. This was one of those times when he felt he had not quite grown up, he knew so little about how things really worked; complicated channels ran between truth and lying; in public life the adept survivors navigated with sure instincts while retaining a large measure of dignity. Only occasionally, as a consequence of tactical error, was it necessary to lie significantly, or tell an important truth. Mostly it was surefooted scampering between the two extremes. Wasn’t the interior life much the same?

  Stephen made a late lunch and brought it to his desk. In the grey air between his window and two nearby tower blocks, widely separated flakes were tossing on a bitter wind. The promised March snow was on its way. He had meddled inexpertly. It was not enough to send a book to a newspaper, to set something in motion and sit back. Political culture was theatrical, it required constant and active stage management of a kind he knew was beyond him. He hoped Morley did not phone. While he was constructing a version of the conversation they might have, the phone at his elbow did ring, and made him start. It was Thelma.

  Since his visit the summer before, they had maintained infrequent contact. She sent humorous, recriminatory postcards. She was amused, or made out she was, that he should be so alarmed by Charles’s behaviour and took this as proof of incipient middle age. You used to be an experimenter yourself, she wrote. You championed dada at our dinner table. Now dada’s warming his slippers by the fire. She pretended to believe that he was personally responsible for Charles, that it was all the fault of his first novel. Dear Gerontophiliac, please write Charles a novel extolling the virtues and joys of senility. Or take some scissors to your longest pair of trousers and come and see us. She had enjoyed the story of his climb to the tree-house. Charles is installing a fridge. Please come and help him carry it up. Behind this jokiness, which at times was very strained indeed, was an accusation that he had let them down. Whether Charles had undertaken a courageous journey into his past, or had simply gone mad in a sweet and harmless way, then he, Stephen, should be on hand to lend his old benefactor support. He had proved himself to be rather too squeamish.

  While his spirits had still been low, Stephen’s feelings had been uncomplicated. Charles and Thelma had once seemed the very embodiment of lively maturity. Their house exuded solidity and excitement. Against the background of an expensive, orderly hush, people talked competitively, extravagant or nonsensical theories were expounded by physicists and politicians who drank and laughed a lot and went home to rise the next day to responsible jobs. In the early days, Stephen sometimes thought that this was the kind of household he would have liked to have been brought up in. As second best, he had his breakdown in Thelma’s tasteful guest bedroom, he sat at her feet and listened, or pretended to, and took lessons in worldliness from Charles.

  Once they had gutted their lives and moved to Suffolk, and after he had witnessed the lengths Charles needed to go, Stephen had felt that he was the one who had been betrayed. The loss was all his. And he padded himself with sensible objections: Charles’s fake boyhood, and Thelma’s encouragement of it, was a private, marital business. They needed Stephen, much as some couples need an observer to heighten their sexual pleasure, or dramatise and validate their rows. He was being used. Neither of them had wanted to explain to him what they were doing, making it impossible to know how to behave. Besides, when Charles returned to his old life, which he surely would one day, he would be saved embarrassment if Stephen kept his distance. Their friendship could resume.

  Now that he had his work, his Arabic and tennis, he was less certain. He still winced in anticipation of meeting Charles in short trousers again talking his boned-up schoolboy English; but Stephen’s curiosity and sense of duty were growing. Previously, when he had been hanging on, groping from day to day, he had needed to protect himself against other people’s madness. Now, he thought, he could risk more, be generous. And yet he had done nothing. He was attached to his daily routines, reluctant to disturb them even for a day or two. He was waiting for change, for developments like this, Thelma’s phone call.

  Her voice was strained and breathy. The telephone acoustic exaggerated the dry tick of her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

  ‘Stephen. Can you come immediately? Can you get here today?’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I can’t tell you now. Will you try and get here as soon as you can? Please.’ He squeezed the empty beer can in his hand. It made a cracking noise which caused Thelma to say quickly, ‘My God! What’s that? Stephen, are you there?’

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ll go to the station and get the first train out. I don’t know when that will be.’

  Thelma seemed to have moved the receiver away from her mouth. ‘I won’t be able to meet you. You’ll have to find a taxi.’ She hung up.

  He took the remains of his lunch to the kitchen, washed the plate and set about locking up the flat. As he was bolting the windows he noticed how the snowflakes were thickening and becoming whiter against the darkening air. He went to his bedroom and packed enough clothes for a week. In his study he wrote a note to Mr Cromarty which he intended to drop off on his way out, and a letter to the tennis coach which could be posted at the station.

  He had his overcoat on and was fiddling with the switches on his answering machine when the phone rang again.

  A woman’s voice called out with military precision, ‘Movement here, wanting to talk to Mr Lewis.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you alone in your house? Good. Please don’t leave it within the next ten minutes. And keep this line clear. You have a visitor.’ The line snapped silent while Stephen was demanding an explanation. He went to a window and looked down on to the wide street engorged with lines of rush-hour traffic. Visible only where it tumbled through wedges of red and yellow light, the snow was dissolving as fast as it could fall in an alien environment of asphalt and hot metal. He was tempted to leave immediately for the station, but curiosity kept him pacing in the hall. More than ten minutes went by. His packed bag was by the front door and he was turning to walk towards it when he saw a shadow fall across the door’s frosted glass an instant before the doorbell rang.

  The four men outside could have passed for Jehovah’s Witnesses. With brief, apologetic smiles they pushed past him, their gazes fixed ahead on details – the skylight in the hall, the box that housed the electricity meter, dado rails, skirting boards, doors. Ignoring his ‘Now look here!’ they dispersed through the apartment. He was about to go after them when more footsteps on the stairs made him step out on to the landing and look down the stairwell.

  A young man in glasses, with an armful of telephones, was running up, followed by two women, one carrying a typewriter, the other a portable switchboard. There were more people further down. He heard someone fall hard on the loose step and murmur the mildest of curses. The first three filed past hurriedly without acknowledging his presence, intent on their jobs as they disappeared into his flat. He waited for the rest to come up, but for the moment there was no sound. He leaned out
over the banister rail and saw the polished tip of a black shoe twenty feet down. They were waiting.

  The small dining room off his kitchen was being transformed into an office. One red, one black and two white telephones had been connected to the switchboard on which pinprick lights pulsed. The man with glasses was speaking on the red phone, reciting a long code. A woman was already typing without looking at the keys and using all her fingers, a trick Stephen had long admired. One of the four security men stepped in from the fire escape. It was beginning to look homely. A secretary was arranging on the table in- and out-trays, a thick pile of stationery, and a shallow box which contained coloured paper clips, drawing pins, rubber bands and a pencil sharpener in the shape of a tomato. Someone was bringing in an extra chair and asked Stephen to mind out the way. Once he had guessed what was happening, he adopted an air of face-saving bemusement. He crossed his arms and was leaning in the doorway watching the activity when he heard a movement behind him and a voice in his ear.

  ‘We were driving out of town with a quite unprecedented gap between appointments and the PM insisted. They’ll put everything back, I promise.’

  Stephen’s elbow had been taken and he was being led along the hallway at a snail’s pace by a bald gentleman with half-moon specs. From the living room came a hiss of short-wave radio interference.

  ‘We thought you’d be most comfortable in the study.’ They stopped outside the door and the gentleman drew from his inside pocket a printed form and a fountain pen and handed both to Stephen. ‘Official Secrets Act. Sign between the pencilled crosses if you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  ‘We’ll go away and leave you in peace.’

  Stephen wrote his name and handed back the paper and pen. The gentleman tapped softly on the study door and at the sound of a voice held the door open for Stephen and closed it quietly behind him.

  The Prime Minister, who was already installed in the armchair by the fire, nodded as Stephen, still in his overcoat, took a wooden chair and sat down. On a shelf two feet above the armchair, just within the line of shadow cast by a lampshade, was Morley’s book. He tried not to look. He was being addressed.

  ‘I hope you’ll forgive this. As you see, I don’t travel lightly.’ For a moment their eyes met, then both looked away. Stephen had not replied and what followed was cool, without an interrogative tone. ‘Is this an inconvenient moment?’

  ‘I was on my way to the station.’

  The Prime Minister, who was known to despise railways, appeared relieved. ‘Ah well. Movement will give you a lift I’m sure.’

  Enough time passed to allow the blandness of formalities to die away. They cleared their throats in turn. Stephen hunched forwards on his chair and stared into the fire as he prepared to listen, drawing his coat around him as though for protection.

  The voice raised itself impersonally to deliver a set speech. ‘Mr Lewis, Stephen if I may, I wish to discuss a matter of great delicacy, a personal matter with you. I know little enough about you, but you are recommended on two counts which make me hope we may be of like minds, that we share a certain way of looking at the world.’

  Stephen did not demur. He wanted to hear more.

  ‘You worked on one of the sub-committees, and as far as I know you did not dissent from its conclusions. And you are a close friend of Charles Darke’s. I’ve come here at some considerable risk of being embarrassed, of appearing ludicrous, to talk about Charles. I have to trust you. I’m rather putting myself in your hands. However, I ought to warn you that should you decide to report our conversation, or even my presence in your house, you will find it very difficult to make yourself believed. All that’s been taken care of.’

  ‘Such is trust,’ Stephen said, but he was ignored.

  ‘I have thought long and hard about what I should do. I have not come here on impulse. I thought we might meet naturally, formally, and that I would be able to give you at least a hint of what was on my mind. I was sorry you were unable to come to lunch.’

  The phone was ringing in the kitchen. From habit, Stephen stirred, then sank back into his coat.

  ‘Before I go any further, I think I ought to explain to you, in case you’ve never thought it through, the unique constraints of my position. I want to communicate with Charles, in a personal way, that is. The clichés are true. Leadership is isolation. From the moment I am woken, until late into the night, I am surrounded by civil servants, advisers and colleagues. The cultivation and expression of feeling is an irrelevance in my profession and I can speak with none of these people in an intimate way. In the past this has presented no problem at all. Only now, when I have something to express, do I find myself confined, curiously incapable. Unbriefed. Others might set their thoughts down in a letter and trust it to the post. For obvious reasons that is out of the question. The telephone is so complicatedly controlled where I am, screened, filtered, monitored, that a personal conversation is unthinkable. I’ve tried communicating with Charles at an official level of course, but he simply ignores that kind of thing. I think his wife gets there first. Recently, I have felt almost desperate.’

  ‘Your speech just now in the Commons didn’t seem much impaired,’ Stephen said.

  The Prime Minister resumed in a quieter voice.

  ‘Charles was introduced to me at a lunch I gave for a fresh intake of MPs, one October many years ago. His energy and wit – he seemed determined to make me laugh – his charm and his enthusiasm for everything the Party stood for seemed quite implausible. I thought he was pulling my leg, parodying something I did not quite understand, and that made me think he was clever, but perhaps a little untrustworthy. Over the next few meetings that impression was dispelled and I became very fond of him. So youthful, cheerful, funny, and with useful experience behind him in a number of fields. Seeing him, and of course I never saw him alone, always bucked me up. I began to envisage a future for him. Something on the public relations side. I thought that one day he might make a very impressive Party Chairman.

  ‘I brought him on, advised him to get his name about, so it wouldn’t be difficult to offer him something. He needed bulking out with experience, I thought. Then there would be no stopping him. When I initiated the Childcare Project I made sure Charles had responsibility for some of the subcommittees. That gave us the opportunity to meet confidentially every now and then. He was full of ideas and I looked forward to these meetings. I began to call them a little more often than was necessary. You might think it extraordinary and perverse that I should form an attachment to a young man …’

  ‘Oh no,’ Stephen said, ‘not at all. But he is someone’s husband. And you are the upholder of family values.’

  ‘Oh that,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘He has no children and one would hardly describe what he has with his wife as a family. There’s a lot of unhappiness there you know.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Even with Charles at the Home Office, the Project under way and regular full Cabinet meetings, I still saw very little of him. So, after much reflection, I called in MI5 and had him, well, followed, on a daily, round-the-clock basis. I had no suspicions, of course. He was as loyal to his country and Government as I am. I went to great lengths to make sure that no file was opened on him. You see, having him followed was a way of being with him all the time. Can you understand that?’

  Stephen nodded.

  ‘Seven o’clock every evening I received detailed, typed-up accounts of his movements and contacts during the preceding twenty-four hours. I read them late at night in bed, after the despatch boxes and FO telegrams. I imagined myself at his side. I got to know his habits, his favourite places, his friends. You yourself featured a fair amount. It was as though I were his guardian spirit.

  ‘Over the months the reports accumulated and I read back through the pages, as one might a favourite romantic novel – not that I read such things. I noticed how rarely his wife accompanied him, how insistent she was on keeping her distance from h
is political career, at least outside the home.’

  ‘She had a job,’ Stephen said.

  ‘So you say. Other disturbing patterns in Charles’s behaviour were emerging. There were visits to unlikely private addresses in Streatham, Shepherd’s Bush, Northolt. It was concern, not jealousy I assure you, which made me ask MI5 to investigate more thoroughly. You can imagine my shock when I learned that he was visiting prostitutes. Then it came out that these were places which catered for highly specialised tastes.’

  ‘What sort of tastes?’

  ‘The clients did a great deal of dressing up. More than that I did not wish to know. What I did know was that this was clear evidence of deep unhappiness in his marriage. This was surely the behaviour of a very lonely man. After all, he did not even remain faithful to one establishment. I thought I must help him, talk to him, reassure him. I was devising the pretext for a meeting when I received his letter of resignation. I was upset, more than that, angry. I wanted to have him watched in Suffolk, but MI5 were complaining about the allocation of manpower with no justifying results. To send people out there without convincing explanations would have aroused suspicions. So since that time I have been cut off entirely from Charles. I have nothing but the old reports and, of course, the minutes of our Project meetings.’

  Stephen was careful to keep his tone neutral. ‘Why not take the day off and go down there yourself and see him?’

  ‘I can’t go anywhere alone. Bodyguards apart, I have to take the nuclear hotline and that means at least three engineers. And an extra driver. And someone from Joint Staff.’

  ‘Disarm,’ Stephen said, ‘for the sake of the heart.’

  The Prime Minister had the knack of ignoring irrelevant remarks. ‘I’d like to know how he is, what he’s doing. You were going to phone me, remember?’