High Dive

by Jonathan Lee

  He sat back. He felt in serious need of water. How long had he been talking? It felt like the longest speech of his life.

  “Whatever you think of her,” Lena said, “she took the islands back with decisive style.”

  “What, Lena? Please. Are you serious, Lena? The Tories? Style?” He leaned over to the next table, unoccupied now, and stole a fistful of nuts from a bowl.

  “OK,” she said. “Perhaps I’m not the authority.”

  “Neither am I. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but. You should…you should read this.” He tapped the newspaper. “Or a better one. Did you want some of these, the peanuts? I’m saying—all I’m saying is—you should be a bit…a bit interested.” He could hear the slur in his words, the excess volume.

  “I’ve enough to worry about.”

  “Come on.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “For fuck’s sake.”

  “What did you say?”

  “You’re a smart woman. You might be bored, but these are people’s lives.”

  He was lecturing her on the value of human life. The irony did not escape him. His own words had struck him a dull blow to the skull. She looked away and played with her necklace. Gold bumblebee buzzing on a thin gold chain. Her cheeks had become flushed. The colouring doubled or trebled her beauty. But he’d lost her. He knew he had. He should have bottled his prattle.

  She rubbed her forehead. The bar guy came to check everything was OK. Told them table service would be stopping soon.

  “Listen,” Dan said to him. “What part of Argentina are you from?”

  “I’m from Uruguay,” the waiter replied. “Originally I’m from Uruguay, but I’ve lived here for ten years.”

  The bare facts of the waiter’s nationality left Dan lost for words. He crawled for something to say. He sneaked. “Hey,” he announced. Why was he suddenly saying “hey?” “One more question. Maybe you could help me and Lena here. We have a terrorism query.”

  Why was he saying all this?

  “We have a question for you about Maggie.”

  “Maggie?” the waiter said.

  “Aye, that’s right. Maggie.”

  The waiter puckered his lips. “Thatcher?”

  “That’s her. The one who’s left Ireland to rot in the rain.”

  “Thank you,” the waiter said. “But I am badly busy.”

  “Tell me, Badly Busy. Tell us. Is Maggie a terrorist?” He was sounding sneery. Angry. He hated himself when he sounded sneery. But if the waiter didn’t listen properly, he’d take him by the throat. He’d squeeze the life right out of his smug little neck. “Like, you know, Jomo—Jomo Kenyatta. Or like, you’ll know him, Menachem—his name is Menachem, something, Mena—I’m asking, what’s the difference between a terrorist and a leader? Is it just about waiting for the times to change?”

  The barman’s hand moved to his throat and glided uninterruptedly down his tie. The supreme elegance of this gesture left Dan speechless.

  Lena had decided to be amused. She watched the barman move around the room spreading his message that service was stopping. She swung her legs to the side of the table. “Had a few tonight, then?”

  “It’s complicated, is all I’m saying.”

  “Everything is.”

  “No, not everything. Most things are unbelievably fucking simple.” Wake up. Join an army. Feel the frightening scale of the world.

  She reached for her handbag and half strangled herself with the strap.

  “Got to go,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I have to go.”

  “I’ve offended.”

  “Ach, no. Nice to meet you. I’ve overrun a bit, that’s all, and I’m a simple sort, so there you go.”

  She stood and held out her hand. It was as if this really had been all business, a promising transaction collapsed.

  He looked at her. What to say? “OK. I enjoyed meeting you.”

  Her fingers slipped from his.

  Everything in the bar looked peculiarly flat now. The Argentinian barman, the one who wasn’t Argentinian, moved stiffly, like a practised drunk, past a line of two-dimensional bottles with strange chrome spouts. The ceiling and walls were drained of natural light and weather. Everything was bland and artificial, free of the unsettling effects of events. The darkened window glass offered only reflection now. Here he was, in a place of temporary safety, soon to know if his wiring had worked, and what the fuck was he doing?

  He put down enough cash to cover the bill and a large tip. He rushed outside. She was in the street. He saw the dress first, then the hair. The hair was moving in the wind and she was trying to hail a taxi. The frailty of her wave made him think of his mother hugging him before he left for Brighton, scrabbling at his shoulders like a climber on a rock face, bound to nothing, bound to fall, knowing nothing, knowing something—but how much did she understand?

  When he was close enough for Lena to hear him he said, “I’ve been up since quarter to four. Not sleeping. I’m sorry. Fatigue makes me more prick-like than usual. My name’s Dan…Forgive that stuff.”

  She didn’t turn around. She didn’t flinch. Nothing seemed to surprise her. Maybe that’s what real happiness was, he thought: the inability to feel surprised. But it could just as easily be a definition of misery.

  The road was distinctly lit. Lamp posts were queuing up a hill. He could take it all in with a flicker of the eye: the closed-up shops; the railings; the metal bars guarding windows.

  “I’ll walk until I find a lift,” she said.

  “Let me walk with you, help you get a taxi.”

  “No. Yes. If you like.”

  They walked side by side. The pavement was peaceful. The only movement was the flutter of litter. A Lilt can rattled at the kerb.

  The list of things they didn’t discuss was long. Children, relationships, hopes, regrets, favourite foods, views on sex, friends alive, friends dead, break-ups, disease, famine, love, all the different kinds of leave-taking that make up a life. They exchanged maybe a hundred words, but the silences between felt special. He tried to hold her shoulder but she rolled it away. Cold and pebbled, her skin; he’d expected it to be warm. He looked at the shine of her eyes and sensed there was nothing he could do.

  Maybe I should just ask, he thought. Would I be able to kiss you? Would that be OK? He wasn’t sure how it would sound. Like a fourteen-year-old’s zitty plea, probably.

  They were perfectly still, facing each other. He looked down at his watch, registered the time. A bus stop. She decided to take a bus. A bus came and she moved towards its hissing doors.

  He gave her a half-smile as they parted. That he could manage even that was a credit to his ability to pretend. This was nothing. It didn’t matter. In a few hours it would be a well-lit morning and he’d read the newspaper, see the accounts of the bombing, and accept that this moment on this street with this stranger was never a part of the story. She doesn’t like you. Move on.

  On the walk back he laughed at himself. The idea that a cold brute, a prizefighter, needed the warmth of a good woman. It was the saccharine stuff that Hollywood sold and he wasn’t a prizefighter, was he? He was an electrician and what he needed was sleep.

  He’d get into bed is what he’d do. He’d get home and sleep soundly. He wouldn’t wake to the letter box tonight. If they wanted to put something through the letter box, let them. He wouldn’t wake in the night and think how noisy the bed sheets were, a crashing sea all around him. He wouldn’t wake like he had these last three weeks with the dippy idea of the ocean in his mind, mouth dry with dread, hand grappling for a glass of water. He simply would not wake.

  9

  Moose felt daft with adrenalin. One hundred per cent alive for the first time in weeks. Finally it was happening: light laughter; gaps in chatter. Silence was smoothed by classical music. The old gramophone had been procured with events like this in mind. He was circulating through the bar area with a silver tray balanced on the splayed pads of
his fingers. The more competent of the summer girls were doing the same, weaving tactfully through gaps in the partygoers. Twenty elegantly dressed men and women. Thirty. Forty. The space was filling up nicely. Tories, lords. The accident-prone staff he’d tidied away backstage: restocking chiller cabinets, fuelling security staff with coffee.

  Freya’s allocated task in advance of the Prime Minister’s arrival was to keep champagne topped up. She was being rheumy-eyed and unhelpful. Already she’d dropped two flutes. The first mistake sent champagne splashing up Sasha’s legs. He needed her to be on top of her game. After sweeping up fragments from the second glass he asked her what exactly was wrong.

  “What do you think?” she said.

  “I’m supposed to know?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not?”

  “No.”

  “Is it because I rushed you, getting ready?”

  “No.”

  “Are you trying to annoy me by overrelying on the word ‘no?’ ”

  She lifted an eyebrow at this.

  “What exactly, or just vaguely, is wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  Since then he’d been intermittently trying to get his daughter to talk, but her only concession to reciprocity had been to take a bowl of nuts from his hand—nuts that had, after a dozen tiny sampling sessions, left telltale hints of glitter on his fingers. She gave him, in lieu, a side plate of carrot sticks. Each stick radiated outward from a central ramekin of taramasalata. He resented her for being a blot on his happiness, and hated himself for thinking of his own daughter as a blot. He relocated her to the reception desk. She stood behind it, shoulder to shoulder with Surfer John, silent. What came to mind was a Christmas where he and Viv had sent her upstairs to think about why torturing Grandpa was bad.

  “Caroline,” he called.

  “Yes, Mr. Finch?”

  “Be great if you could help Elena top up the champagne.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  If they were all like Caroline his job would be easy-peasy.

  Did the salmon blinis need a little squeeze of something? Would it not have been better to serve them with precise little slices of lemon? He was sure he’d requested lemons. He wondered whether the volume on the gramophone was pitched just a little too high.

  He moved between groups, hoping key individuals noticed his name badge. He was being hands-on, a boss who wasn’t afraid to get involved. He was serving up miniature fish cakes with a self-deprecating air, a years-since-I’ve-done-this smile, but was nervously aware that the point of such self-deprecation was that other people should notice and appreciate it, thereby balancing the ledgers of modesty and praise in his favour. The ministers each had in their information packs a handwritten note signed by Moose. Printed at the bottom was his full name and title, but you could never be sure, could you, what people read and what they skipped. This was his show and he had to have faith.

  Some of the men and women were raucous already and others were whispering in corners, exchanging hushed thoughts about the PM, placing stress on unremarkable syllables. “I just think unless the Lady can pull something exceptional out of the bag, something out of the ordinary, then what we might be looking at tomorrow is, you know, don’t you think, if we’re totally honest…” Fifty of them now? Sixty?

  Marina was with a PR woman. Both of them were holding hefty Filofaxes. A call Maggie would need to make to Scargill. This evening, from this hotel, a call that could change the course of history. He loved overhearing little titbits like this. In hospital he’d felt the press of cancelled life all around him. Tonight put him back in the world.

  A lady with a sequinned neckscarf was contemplating a selection of soft cheeses.

  “Pursuit of income equality!” someone said.

  Over there, by the painting of Harold Wilson, a Welshman was telling Jorge that politics was a matter of give and take—“we give the English our coal, and the English take our water”—and Jorge was giving him the kind of smile that succinctly expresses complete and utter incomprehension.

  John Redwood was seated next to one of two dozen flower arrangements purchased at stupendous expense. Redwood touched his chin and nodded as a young guy in a polka-dot bow tie talked to him about a “small idea I have.” On Redwood’s face was a frown of amused concern.

  “The Lady’s view,” Redwood said eventually, and Moose missed a few words as someone thanked him for a canapé, “…do not need that, those things, to help them find work. A great myth!” When Redwood was happy he looked like Spock from Star Trek. In other moods he was Liza Minnelli.

  Conversations mixing with other conversations.

  “Secondary issue.”

  “Well, that I’d agree on.”

  “Probable cause.”

  “More or less exactly it.”

  “Two hundred thousand, though, is not enough for contempt of court.”

  “Pass the…?”

  “I just can’t get excited about Durham.”

  “Would you…?”

  There was the clinking of fragile glass. Earrings as elegant as the chandeliers overhead. Pockets of choking cigar smoke through which Moose held his breath. He tried not to cough because coughs, when they came, still detonated pain: overlapping, pouncing jolts of it. There were a lot of polished skill-sets around. A lot of firm handshakes and air-kisses. Smiles too big to be fake, too bright to be true—which made them what? Full lips. Empty eyes. He tried to ignore the momentary sense that it was all a vicious pantomime.

  At the end of the bar five important men had been in conversation for perhaps an hour. Geoffrey Howe, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, was among them. He seemed to be talking about the differences between humans and animals. He broke off to throw a fishcake down his throat.

  Dinner jackets identical but for the width of the lapels. White shirts with studs instead of buttons. One or two maroon cummerbunds and shoes of uniform shine.

  Some further food disappeared from Moose’s platter, some napkins from his hand, and one of the group told Mr. Howe that the distinction between humans and beasts was our ability to be coolly rational.

  “No no,” another said. “Our deep capacity to—well, to feel, yes?”

  “No,” Howe said, “you’re right.”

  A young aide Moose had earlier seen sweating in the restaurant now dropped a canapé on the floor. “I am so s-s-sorry,” he said.

  Moose walked over to John and Freya. Freya was still opting for silence. Fine, be that way. He clutched John’s shoulder, a ball of muscle.

  “When the Key VIP arrives, John, alert me immediately.”

  “The Key VIP?”

  “MT.”

  “MT?”

  “Jesus, John, is there anything going on in there?” He tapped John’s forehead with his finger. He did so much harder than he’d meant to. “The Prime Minister.”

  John yawned and said sure no problem.

  Babble at the edge of a dream. Breastbone pain. He’d have to keep slow and calm, look after his heart. Tiredness was already coming for him, trying to steal away the night’s opportunities.

  Sir Anthony Berry was talking to an aide. Moose quietly interjected and asked if everything was all right with the room. Berry had been due to stay at the Metropole, but after a last-minute cancellation Marina had squeezed him in.

  “Oh, absolutely,” said Berry. He was the ideal guest, polite to a fault, hair carefully combed. “Happy a space became available. Thanks for all your help.”

  A simple thank-you: it could mean so much. The smallest acts of appreciation were magnified tenfold tonight.

  Staff who were awaiting the allocation of further tasks had been told to stand with their hands behind their backs, but he saw from his new vantage point behind the bar that one or two still had their fists sunk into their pockets. The slumped ones tended to cluster together. The Poor Posture Club. When managing a large staff you had to keep an eye on all the factions; y
ou couldn’t let the peripheral groups get disgruntled. Some of the waiters’ shirt collars looked wrinkled, and this was irritating. He’d supplied everyone with a little spray gun of starch, bought at his own expense from the Blue Door Launderette.

  Plain-clothes Special Branch men stood motionless at the edges of the room. They had brisk, assertive eyes and when they spoke Moose thought only of right angles. So tall and solid-looking you felt a hundred gut-punches wouldn’t move them. Another eight or nine of them had, he’d noticed, been dispatched to the car-park area. Others were posted on the first-, second- and third-floor landings. It seemed an embarrassingly comprehensive security effort given the only halfway-visible threat was the presence, outside the front entrance, of six or seven student types in itchy-looking clothing. Was one of them Susie, Freya’s friend? Was that why Freya was in a murderous mood? Beyond the window these skinny probable-vegans rocked on the balls of their feet and chanted, “Stop the rot, stop the rot,” without ever quite clarifying what the rot was, or how to stop it. He wondered what it would be like to be one of them, a person who devoted their days to the pursuit of major change. It occurred to him that his own life had been devoted to the opposite activity: the attempt to mould capriciousness into something respectably firm. He ate a blini.

  A couple of top-tier journalists had arrived, a BBC guy and someone with a column in the Telegraph, and in their faces Moose found the closest mirror for his own tensely contained excitement. They ducked in and out of various groups, leaned onto tiptoes every time the revolving door whirred. Tomorrow’s dinner in the Empress Suite would be journalist-free. He needed to check with the External Events Manager that all was running to plan. He couldn’t see her. He sought out Marina instead. Marina usually had the answers.

  She was bending to retrieve a napkin someone had dropped behind one of the gooseneck high-backed chairs. The napkins were conference blue, ordered especially from a supplier who’d seemed to understand Moose’s obsession with shades and textures in a way his own staff never had. As Marina got to her feet he moved to stand beside her and she said, “It’s not so beautiful when it’s full, is it?” There was something a little mournful in her voice. They watched the twitch and throb of the party, women throwing their heads back in laughter, pearls strung around their elegant necks.