‘Nice wig,’ she exclaimed. The appearance was much better than the emergency job, although the feel was no way like the real thing. Still, she liked having a bit of Zack back.
The racket made by towing their overnight cases over pebbles made talking an effort, but Kathy needed to share Alan’s funeral. A pallbearer, she had gone in dress uniform, wondering if two travel packs of tissues was being silly. She wiped out most of the first pack while hints of the organ’s reverberations washed down the west steps. She waited there in front of curious, snap-happy tourists with Alan’s brother, the two eldest children from each marriage and former colleagues.
Once the coffin arrived, everyone could feel the tension on the steps despite the surrounding traffic. Inside the organ had fallen silent – two processions of City bigwigs and clerics followed by the Archbishop with his mitre, shepherd’s staff and B took their places. It seemed an age before the six of them and the casket were lined up to the verger’s satisfaction – he kept adjusting the B which sat on it, the one which Alan had made himself – but inside, with every seat taken, the feeling defied anything in Kathy’s experience. They carried Alan in to the unaccompanied voices of the choir singing I Was Glad, a new arrangement which rendered the opening words in sharp tension to sombre music.
‘Isn’t that for coronations and royal weddings?’ said Zack.
Kathy appeared to ignore his question. ‘You know I don’t do church, it was like angels were calling him home. I can’t describe it. When they reached the words the Archbishop wanted – For there is the seat of judgement – the way the organ came in then, everything changed. That’s what he preached on, you know: Alan’s killers will be found and judged. There will be justice.’
‘That’s not what they reported on the news.’
‘Well, what do you expect now? Even on the BBC. You can find what he said on YouTube, but you have to look harder than you used to.’
Zack caught her up on his progress with Mary. Kathy said it sounded like things were going really well. Back at the MOD even Patrick had gone a bit loopy, failing to imagine targets in Britain vulnerable to a handful of European paratroops. Maybe seizing the trophy during the Wimbledon final – the paratroops could land in helicopters on the outside courts?
Zack had booked a modernised room with a queen-size bed above a pub. Totnes’s high street sloped steeply towards the town’s pepper-pot castle, with the pub about half-way along. Suddenly they found themselves in the middle of vegetarian cafés and three butchers. For a few minutes they were entranced by the old-style displays of joints on hooks, chops and steaks and kidneys on trays, featherless poultry with heads and clawed feet, and not a scrap of plastic wrap in sight. One butcher in a white coat and straw hat intrigued them – a woman of their own generation with a B on her striped apron.
While Kathy unpacked, Zack borrowed the landlord’s phone for a directory enquiries call for an Oxford number. He didn’t want to use his mobile or Kathy’s. Then they walked to the river where they found a different kind of drinking establishment, loud and large for twenty-somethings. The tide of liquid lunchers had gone out and a couple of hours would pass before diners followed by party-goers came back in. Zack ordered a gin and slim-line tonic, Kathy a Merlot. Staff wiped tables around them.
‘No vaper?’ Kathy asked.
‘I’m trying to give up. Bob did five years ago, it seems. He has a bit of weed now and again, but that’s it. I might as well be in character. I’m also trying to drink less.’
‘We know nothing about your brother for years until he starts appearing on telly, and suddenly you know if he’s got a pet hamster. It seems odd to me; it must feel weird to you.’
‘You’re right.’ Zack grinned. ‘He flosses. Can you believe that? Bob’s teeth are great – end of. They put a camera behind the bathroom ventilator.’
For a few minutes they drank each other in. Then Kathy looked around and decided that the cacophony from hoovering was security enough. ‘I think the crunch is going to be soon, Zack. The feeling in Whitehall is just horrible. Every day another horror. A week doesn’t go by without the President of the European Commission looking for another way to needle him.’
‘Christ knows why; he has enough populist movements on his own plate.’
‘Ducros is on a do-or-die mission to avert Frexit. Making Britain look really stupid is the only thing that works in the French polls, apparently.’
Zack switched to a low percentage beer and they sneaked in an extra round before dinner. The pub manager brought their drinks out himself. Kathy nodded skywards. ‘Not too many drones in these parts,’ she remarked.
‘We climb up to the castle and shoot them down,’ he replied with a grin.
Interesting, Kathy thought – so in some places there was a resistance. Maybe even a Resistance. In fact, she was part of it.
Dinner was modern Italian in a stunning upstairs find by Zack. They had the tasting menu and laughed a lot. At a certain point Kathy said, ‘Before, we laughed more. I liked that better.’
They gnawed at that bone for a while – Kathy’s responsibilities had increased (Cairstine as well as her career) and the world was going mental, but both of them sensed something else. Mortality? Hopefully it would be decades before Death tapped either of them on the shoulder, but maybe he had given their Facebook pages a glance out of curiosity.
It was Zack who came out with it. ‘Don’t let’s pretend. My career isn’t happening. You can’t count this weird thing with my brother. When we were younger, everything was possible – we could be successes. You are. I’m not.’
‘No, that’s not it. Listen to me. Please.’ She squeezed his right arm so tightly it almost fell off. ‘Twenty years ago, we had no idea how much success would matter. It matters, certainly more than I realised. But what I want back from our twenties is how we felt about not having success. About being nobodies – no, not nobodies, ordinary – Alan’s word. OK, back then everything was possible, but neither of us went to Eton. We grew up knowing that not being especially successful was by far our most likely fate. But we didn’t let that throw us. We laughed, because we felt – yes it matters, but there’s more to life.
‘I’m so proud of you saving our country, but it’s such a heavy job – so serious. Let’s not lose us – us when we laughed more.’
After dinner they made love with the abandon of the wild horses Kathy remembered near Kings Bay, the crashing of their furniture masked by Saturday night music from the pub beneath. When the sounds died they lay quietly. Kathy’s hands roamed over Zack’s new muscles, on his chest, his belly and his thighs. ‘You like?’ he said.
‘Promise me in Canada you won’t have cosmetic surgery. Just re-grow your hair.’
Zack sat up and switched on the bedside light, his fingers pressing against his brow. ‘What, no Richard Deshaye eyebrows?’
‘I bought Tony Mortimer’s and I’m sticking with them.’
39
Mid-Atlantic, Friday 26 June 2020
Vengeance turned twenty degrees to port, continuing her lethal pilgrimage which had begun five and a half weeks previously. At the depth she called home the Atlantic, like the far side of the moon, remained in permanent night, but on board the lighting changed from white (day) to night (red). The crew were ten days short of the traditional ‘Sod’s Opera’ marking the mid-point of the patrol.
Although space on board had opened up, there were still stacked cases of ‘train smash’ (tinned tomatoes); there were still unwatched DVDs, including advance copies of summer trash due for release at the start of July. One hundred and thirty-seven bodies had adjusted to this environment. On land some would avoid driving for a few days, as eyes learned how to focus more than five or ten feet away. Some dreamed of air fresh off the highlands after three months of air-conditioning.
The closest land? The seabed two and a half miles beneath; the closest dry land was th
e Cabo Verde islands, five hundred miles away. Two hours previously Vengeance had adjusted course to avoid a geological survey ship. Twelve hours before that she had skirted a particularly raucous school of whales, in case something unexpected lay hidden behind their acoustic curtain. Earlier still, she had turned far out of the path of two Chinese submarines making their way to the Pole after showing the flag in Africa.
For five weeks Vengeance had sent no messages to anyone, nor would she do so for the rest of the patrol. Certainly Vengeance did not access the World Wide Web. Instead, occasional packets of information transmitted from the naval headquarters at Northwood dribbled in through a long wave antenna. A kilometre in length (six times as long as the submarine itself), the antenna was towed through the water. Terse announcements of general and sports news were posted weekly for the crew but, like gift parcels of condensed milk, these were mostly ignored except at times of crisis. Crew could receive short family messages once a week but not reply. Everyone knew the messages were filtered. If a family calamity threatened, someone might judge it best to sit on the news until twenty-four hours before the boat returned to port. Nothing was dreaded more than being called to see the commanding officer then.
In this artificial environment what blossomed was the British pub quiz, an art form laid low in its home environment by smartphones and the internet. Vengeance’s current crew – each boat had two crews that alternated – included two of the top quiz-masters in the Submarine Service.
Vengeance’s weekly news summary for Friday 26 June was long on Wimbledon odds and British hopeful Tamsin Stewart. Wildfires were raging in California. French air traffic controllers had persuaded their high-speed train counterparts to join them in a twenty-four-hour midsummer strike. A summary prepared twenty-four hours later would have looked completely different.
40
Helensburgh, Saturday 27 June 2020
Like the tides in Morecambe Bay, the tears had welled up without warning. Kathy had spent the night alone in the room she had occupied as a child, something she had previously avoided. She had done it because this could be a last time: her warning to Zack the week before had been serious. Now there was no adult to comfort her. Cairstine was making things predictably worse.
None of it flustered Meghan, the mental health nurse. Her motto was the Australian version of ‘Dinna fash yersel’ – no worries. She was from far north Queensland. She had not worrying, dealing with poisonous snakes and cleaning up messes down pat.
‘It’s water off a duck’s back, Kathy,’ Meghan promised. She meant her ‘adoption’ by Cairstine as her missing daughter. ‘Robert in Balloch thinks I’m his wife. He wants to know when we’re going to share a bed again. I tell him I spend enough time touching his private parts as it is. With a towel, that is.’
‘Meghan, if we didn’t have you – well, Cairstine would be in a home, which would be such a shame. She hasn’t had any falls for months.’
Meghan nodded. ‘The kitchen was the only worry, but now we switch the hob off at the fuse box, it’s right as rain.’ The new fuse box had a two-handed closure which was beyond Cairstine. ‘She’s got the kettle and the microwave and she’s laughing.’
An adviser had gone through the house and recommended new appliances. Kathy wanted the home as safe as possible before she went away. They had changed the microwave for a low power model with child’s play controls and a safety on the timer. The new models included voice-recognition software. When the door opened, the microwave asked Cairstine what she was putting in or did she want to choose a time. When it finished it told her and reminded her of its contents.
The adviser had been so enthusiastic about ‘the Internet of things’ that Kathy had signed Cairstine up as a guinea pig. Come winter’s gales, anyone with the right codes could see on their own phone what was on in the house and what was open. They could hover on icons to display for how long an appliance had been switched on, and double-click to switch it off. That included anyone in Canada. It embarrassed Kathy to admit that the blessing seemed mixed.
Meghan carried on with her unflustered update. ‘Last week, Tuesday, she put apples in water on the stove to stew. Obviously the hob was off so they were still there on Thursday. What’s that in the scheme of things? Nothing, really.’
In the scheme of things, nothing really. Cairstine had wandered into the garden, leaving the television on loud. Kathy went to turn the volume down.
‘Leave it on, dear,’ Cairstine called. ‘Something nice might come on.’
Fat chance, thought Kathy, lowering the volume. Another discussion programme – Saturday morning filler. Once she had tried interesting Cairstine in CBeebies and been water-boarded on the spot.
Her mother came back with a handful of daisies. ‘They’re pretty,’ Kathy said. ‘Can you smell them? No? Maybe pick a few more, then? No, you won’t find this interesting, it’s politics.’
‘Politics? I’d shoot the lot of them. I like that Bob, though. He speaks his mind.’
‘It’s not speaking of minds we need, mum; what we’re short of is politicians with minds worth speaking.’
Cairstine turned and put one hand on Meghan’s elbow. ‘Did you say something, dear? No? I thought I heard something.’ Cairstine turned her shoulders as far away from Kathy as they would go. ‘Kathy’s leaving me, you see,’ she explained. ‘But you won’t leave me. I know that.’
‘No-one’s leaving you,’ Meghan demurred.
‘I am, for a while,’ Kathy corrected. ‘My work is taking me to Canada.’
‘What did I tell you?’ replied Cairstine triumphantly. ‘I said so a long time ago. I speak my mind and she doesn’t like it.’
On screen the discussion gave way to the news. To general consternation, Tamsin Stewart had come out as straight. After that excitable headline, the picture cut to the Folkestone end of the Channel Tunnel. Some refugees had taken advantage of the French train controllers’ strike and got through. More than some – the camera pulled back to show perhaps four hundred motley figures – men, women and children – corralled behind makeshift barriers in a freight marshalling yard. Some more were still coming through, limping after the thirty-mile walk. A few were on stretchers. The picture switched to Zafir Khan, the Secretary of State for Transport. Kathy turns the volume up slightly. It was Hobson’s choice: which could she bear least, Khan’s words, the refugees’ or Cairstine’s?
Her phone chirped. Kathy removed herself into the garden. ‘Yes!’ she sighed, followed by an alert, ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ She closed the French windows. ‘Yes, I just saw something.’ After a pause, ‘Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. I’ve got a flight booked for tomorrow but I’ll come right away – of course.’
She flew inside and upstairs to snatch her belongings, impetuously adding the koala with a missing ear which Cairstine had left on Kathy’s window sill. The ideas of ‘home’ and ‘goodbye’ rang tinnily in her ears. Home – was that the small town in front of her, where she had grown up? Putney? The Navy? Perhaps Canada. She had no clue. That she no longer had time to think these thoughts was a relief, but of a sickening kind.
41
London, Sunday 28 June 2020
Annabel gets her arse round my way before we go into the Cabinet Office Briefing Room. There’s something which the Vigilance need to sort now and she sorts it. What gets me through days like today: whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.
What a crap room. Annabel has plans to jazz it up, but this Channel Tunnel disaster has happened too fast. So you find yourself a corner in a cramped box with crappy air-conditioning, a too-big walnut table which is six seats by four and a wall of out-of-date technology at one end. It’s the kind of place I’d have expected a country with a naff football team to have used for reviewing tactical video in, maybe, 1993? If today feels like England 1993, I feel like Graham Taylor – do I not like that!
Annabel is opposite me, Patrick next to her, the
n Zaf, next to him one of his civil servants who looks like a hospital case. Looking around we’ve also got the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary, the Attorney General, Shima, Jennifer, one of the middle Bills, our chief spin doctor and the chief of the Kent police. The room’s sweaty, but not half as sweaty as it’s about to get. ‘I’ve got one question and one question only,’ I say. ‘What the fucking Jesus happened?’ I slam the table. ‘Don’t go pissing me about with how we’re going to respond – I’ve got the A team doing that. You shambles just tell me what happened, and how you were all so up your own arses you didn’t spot it.’
Hospital case tries to speak but is too close to death. Zaf steps in. ‘First thing to say Bob, right away – I know it’s not good enough, but we’re sorry. I’m sorry. All of us. We’ve let you down.’
All the heads nod – even Patrick’s. I count them. I brush the apology to one side and gesture to Zaf to get to the sausage in the hot dog.
Which is a dog’s dinner, right? The opening trick was the so-called French high speed train controllers’ strike, which meant no trains – passenger or freight – through the Channel tunnel for twenty-four hours from 11pm Friday. Next the French authorities notify us they plan to take advantage of the strike to practise a bomb search of the service tunnel – all thirty miles of it. Diagrams flash up on the screens. The service tunnel is about fourteen feet in diameter and runs in between the two rail tunnels, with access every four hundred yards. Specially-built electric vehicles run in it. Of course we said fine. Third thing, we lost video of the service tunnel, but nobody fretted – the main tunnels were clear and empty, and everyone assumed it was part of the exercise.
Time of Lies Page 19