by Jonathan Lee
“The bar?” he said.
She shrugged. “The hotel.”
“Not you as well.”
She frowned.
“Freya,” he said. “The people that I—that I care about, they’re depressed. Accommodating people is what we do, Mari.”
“Were you always such a functional man, Moose?”
Functional. The word conjured up the big joyless filing cabinet in his office. “There’s nothing wrong with something fulfilling its purpose, if that’s what you mean.”
Her eyes went bright. She seemed about to laugh. Something malicious he hadn’t seen before? “What is your purpose, do you think?” she said.
“My purpose?”
“I am curious.”
“Well, today it’s about keeping Thatcher happy, isn’t it?”
“And Freya?”
“What about her?”
“She seems miserable, you said. I agree.”
“I don’t know what it’s about. If you know, I’d appreciate knowing.”
Marina twirled the napkin she’d retrieved from the floor. Several dots of red wine were sunk into the stitching. If this were Viv, she would be holding it further from her body. Viv would have it pinched between forefinger and thumb, at arm’s length.
“If you know something,” he repeated.
“No. I don’t know what she’s feeling.”
Behind her, through the window glass, a greenish night took shape. “Maybe she’s got a boyfriend,” he said. “She’s been out a lot. Maybe it’s boyfriend trouble. There was a kid called Tom who used to hang around a lot.”
“Have you asked her?”
He shook his head. “If you had a daughter you’d know that questions like that never get answered. They stare at you in a way that suggests you’re a nutcase from outer space, Mari, and that the kindest thing would be to laser you into the ground. Pow. BZZZZZZ.”
He expected another smile, a warmer one, but her lips didn’t move. Had he been insensitive? Perhaps her own childlessness was a source of pain? Her easy warmth with Engelbert suggested she’d make a good mother. It wasn’t necessarily too late.
“Engel OK?” he said.
“Yes. In your office.”
“Good.”
“I hope you don’t mind?”
“Of course not.”
“Emma is babysitting. He’ll sleep soon, I hope.”
“Set up camp in the side room?”
Marina nodded. “She’s trying to tire him out. Last time I looked, they were making a castle from tinfoil. My sister would kill me if she knew he wasn’t sleeping.”
“Have they found my rolls of tape? For the—the construction?”
Now the smile came. “Tell me, why do you need all this tape?”
“I buy in bulk,” he said. “Saves the hotel money.”
“What about friends?” Marina said. “Who is she friends with at the moment?”
“Emma?”
“Freya.”
Someone downed a glass of champagne and said, “Ahhhhh.” A few jackets were being positioned on the backs of chairs. One woman had a bow tie draped around her neck. Mrs. Thatcher was definitely late.
“Well,” Moose said, “there’s that Tracy girl. The one with the, how do I put this…with the fashion sense? And of course Susie Thingy, who I think is currently outside protesting against our Prime Minister, which is interesting. Have you noticed that there seems to be a fair amount of chatter about the PM’s speech tomorrow? About how if it doesn’t go well she might be, you know…”
“I thought they don’t see each other so much these days. Freya and Susie.”
“Yes, yes. Did I know that?”
“An argument one or two weeks ago.”
“How do you hear this stuff?”
She shrugged. “People tell me things.”
“That’s what I’ve always thought about myself, that people tell me things.”
“Maybe you don’t listen to what they are telling.”
“That seems a bit harsh.”
“Also silence,” Marina said.
“Sorry?”
“If you create a silence, people speak.”
Silence fell. Moose made a point of not speaking.
Marina said, “She’s swimming again, no?”
“Yes, yes. She’s definitely doing that. We went together, actually.”
“That was weeks ago.”
“It went well, though.”
“You had a heart attack, Moose.”
“Well…true.”
“I was talking of recently.”
“Right.”
“Who does she swim with these days?”
“Who with? One of her old swimming-team friends, I think. She’s a grown-up, Mari.”
“Such as?”
“As?”
“Which friends?”
He sunk his fist into a flap pocket of his jacket. He’d cleared out all of the coins. Usually coin-play gave him comfort, the quick answer of cool metal in his hand.
“Mari, is this an interrogation, or what? I’m supposed to be able to name them? Are you suggesting”—someone shoved past him, rude, thoughtless—“that I’m, what, a bad father in some way? Because I’m trying to make the best of a tricky situation, you know. Her mother I get nothing from. I get sweet FA from her mother. I know I’m only a mediocre dad.” He capitulated to a pathetically painful cough. “I’m trying my best.”
“Where are the sausage rolls?” someone shouted. Another pocket of laughter erupted. For a split second Moose felt an incandescent urge to turn a gun on everyone in the room.
“I’m not so familiar with the divorce benefits here,” Marina said.
“What?”
“The sweet FA. I don’t know what this involves.”
Was she being funny?
“I’ve spent years pursuing dead ends, Mari. What I need is—”
“A photograph in the paper with Margaret, and some glowing endorsement. I know, and I do not think you are a mediocre dad.”
Photograph. The word was triggering a memory. “Your exhibition, Mari. The picture of the pig and the islands. Tell me I haven’t missed it.”
“Not yet. Don’t worry.”
“God. Good. I want to know the date. And this is not ego, Mari. This is me trying to get a career going. Why? So Freya can go through university without having to stack shelves. So she can get an education and have a good life. Corny but true.”
“Does she actually want to go to a university, though? Is that her idea of a good life?”
“She’ll go eventually. She’s smarter than all of us put together.”
“So smart she will do what is expected of her, as women must.”
“Look, Mari, I don’t expect you to understand. If I’d had certain opportunities that Freya has. If I had had the encouragement that—”
“I am hearing a lot of I here,” Marina said, and in saying it sounded so terrifyingly like his mother that Moose wondered, briefly, whether he could ever again bear to fantasise about rolling around with her on a sunny square of grass in…Somerset? Dorset? Which got better weather? OK: he could, he could.
He was feeling a little dizzy now, light-headed, regretful about that last glass of Coke. The doctors hadn’t said anything about Coke. They’d just advised him to avoid cigarettes and “sugary and fatty foodstuffs.” How much sugar could there be in a modern glass of Coke? Just a dash, these days, surely.
“Mari,” he said, “I admit it’s partly personal. I feel…I just feel…I feel like if I could do one perfect thing, you know, I’d be happy.”
In response Marina began to say something about daughters, but at that moment Moose saw, on the far side of the room, the familiar red jacket of the Captain. He seemed, oh God, to be talking to the Secretary of State for Education and Science. How had he slipped past security?
“I’m going to have to deal with this, Mari. Sorry. He’s cornered Sir Keith.”
A gap opened up between P
atrick Jenkin and Kenneth Baker. Baker was heading for great things, people said; he’d need to catch a moment with him later. He took the gap, closed in on the red jacket. The injection of pace left him breathless.
“Your Excellency,” he said to Sir Keith, which was definitely the wrong form of address.
Keith Joseph stared at him, a face full of tortured intensity. His features thinned into a wince and he wiped the wince with a conference-blue napkin.
The Captain whispered something to Sir Keith and Sir Keith said, “We’ll come back to that, we will. Have the two of you met?”
“Of course,” Moose said. “Of course.” He slung a friendly arm around the Captain’s shoulders, surprised by the way his fingers seemed able to press between the bones. He said, “Sir Keith, not wishing to interrupt, but would you like me—well—I could introduce you to Mr. Jenkin or Mr. Baker over there, perhaps?” He tried out something between a wink and a blink, still clutching the Captain’s fragile shoulders. Steering them, in fact, in the direction of the bar. A man like the Captain could probably be bribed into silence with a drink or two. An outright ejection from the hotel would risk making a scene. Nice guy—Moose meant him no harm—but he was out of place here. This was a private function.
Sir Keith’s gaze fell on Moose’s name badge. “I can assure you, Mr. Finch, that I don’t need to be introduced to either of the two gentlemen you mentioned.”
“Ah, of course, not introduced—not introduced as such—I just meant—” He did a quick sideways nod in the direction of the Captain. Saving you! Saving you! He’s fun but a little bit crazy!
“I would say, in fact,” Sir Keith went on, “that I probably speak to those gentlemen as often as I do to my own wife. Moreover, the—the Captain? Yes. Well, the Captain and I were in the middle, as it happens, of a conversation about environmental issues.”
“Right,” Moose said. “As if the environment’s a priority!” He swallowed and studied Sir Keith’s increasingly grave expression. He was fucking this up. He really was. “In times like these, I mean.” Stop talking, stop talking. “You know, the rich–poor divide and…” This was bad. This was digging yourself a hole. A Moose in a volcano with a shovel, rumblings from below. Natural disaster with extra lava. He waited for Sir Keith to speak.
“The environment,” Sir Keith said, “is among the most important of concerns. What you may consider to be background scenery is of course—Hello, James, how do you do?—the very thing keeping us alive.”
“Makes me think,” the Captain said, “of those lines from Auden.”
“Yes?” Sir Keith said. “I’m not familiar.”
The Captain recited a line of poetry, something to do with faces in public places.
“Ah,” Sir Keith said. “I must make a note!” He looked bafflingly happy, his eyes soft and moist.
“I always prefer,” the Captain said, “to be outdoors, don’t you? The environment. The elements. The sea. Whereas events such as these—a fandangling job at curation, don’t get me wrong—but public men such as yourself cooped up in small rooms, the faces in private places…”
“Oh, absolutely,” Sir Keith said. “Refreshingly honest. I take no offence. In fact”—he leaned in, chuckling (chuckling!)—“I couldn’t agree more, truth be told.”
Moose looked on, astonished, as the conversation continued to blossom. The Captain brushed crumbs from his jacket. His hair looked extra white and his cheeks teemed with uncommon colour.
“Though I would like,” the Captain said, “to speak to you about another matter at some point too. One concerning education and health. I believe you have links to the pharmaceutical industry? I’d like to discuss what we can do to address a growing problem, a global problem I’ve already written to Mr. Peter Tatchell about. It concerns prejudices and—sincerely—preventing many deaths. But perhaps I’m taking up too much of your fine-sung time.”
“Not at all,” Sir Keith said. “You have my ear.”
Fine-sung time? What did it even mean? Moose shook his head and walked away. You misread people and misread people and misread people again.
Marina was still standing by the curtains, bare arms crossed, back straight, hair and heels reflecting lamplight. “The Captain still seems to be here,” she said.
“Yes. That’s true. Holding it together pretty well.”
Sasha walked by, yawning. A minister touched Karen’s wrist and asked her about cake, or possibly his coat.
Marina said, “Freya has been going there a lot, no? The Captain’s museum.”
“The what? Oh. That.” Paparazzi were beginning to throng outside, a mass of denim jackets and camera bags, which meant—
“She went there twice this week, I think.”
“Why?”
Marina shrugged. “Because she finds him interesting, no? Or is a little bit alone.”
There was a burst of activity in the lobby. Voices. Flashbulbs. Marina saying, “Keep calm, Moose. Don’t rush. Your health.”
“Calm” was on your marks. “Rush” was equivalent to a gun going off. He barely heard the word “health.” He lurched through bodies, elbows out, using the silver tray as a shield. Maggie was here, Maggie was here, and she was what this party was missing.
Some of the photographers had spilled into the hotel. They were saying “Prime Minister, do you have any comment on…?,” “Prime Minister, what do you say to the…?,” “Prime Minister, do you plan to…?” Someone trod on his foot. A police officer was shouting. So many arms and legs. He wedged himself against a painting of Napoleon, chest aching, foot hurting, the blur of black-tie all around. John was a head’s height above the rest, close to the door. He looked confused, hopeless. He was saying “Excuse me, hello.” Freya might have knocked them all into shape but Freya—where was Freya?
A man with a walkie-talkie appeared on the stairs. Who was he? Where from? With a few authoritative words this man managed to restore some semblance of order, but there were still too many people shifting for Moose to get a glimpse of Mrs. Thatcher. The plan to line staff up along the stairs no longer seemed actionable. John wasn’t actioning it. And Plan B was…Why didn’t he have a Plan B? Had he learned nothing? Light from chandeliers fell in shards, illuminating shoulder-dandruff.
He slipped through a few of the more half-hearted spectators. Here the crowd tightened around him. Ducking down he saw between tights and trousers a pair of shoes that could be hers. Brown shoes, scuffed, like his mother sometimes wore—they were not very prime ministerial. The roundness of the ankles surprised him.
A thin zigzag of space opened up. This was his moment. He raised his eyes, savouring every second on the way to her face. He saw the hem of a tweed skirt, he saw the wrinkled bend of a waistband, and it was at this point—the point at which he was straightening his back and beginning to stand tall—that a Special Branch guy barged him into the shadows.
10
Four-something in the morning, the moon’s soft display of emotion, the night bright against closed windows. Dan was nearing the end of his long walk home. Knotweed on his mind, the lost library book, unspoiled face of the receptionist girl, a woman’s hand slipping from his. He was going to have to pay a pro a lot of money. Glyphosate sprayed over the garden. A non-selective herbicide. Kills everything and poisons the soil. Find Dawson and give him a dose? Keep it all for himself? He could imagine the tearful hangover tomorrow. He could imagine the day after that, waking up to no headache, the small pure joy of health restored. He could imagine hearing the Saracens slipping into low gears and men raiding his home, everything falling apart. He could picture the book on knotweed in a puddle of ale, a crowd of dipsos around it, the land of old smoke and the city of myths. There was no real life. Not here, not anymore. Everything pretend. He was drunk.
He gifted a burp to the chill night air. He was booze-snug, insulated, full-bodied, cloudy. He thought he could hear a hysterical mosquito whining at the loss of summer. He tried to clap it dead. Girl in the blue dress had boarded
her bus. Could feel the cold only on his lips, on the tip of his nose. His ears ached. They ached with nothing. In his assessment he’d need to be sick very soon. Could feel his weight shifting wildly as he walked. Waterbed head, a motherfucking dream. He loved Ireland, he loved Belfast. He loved it with nothing.
No cheers or shrieks to be heard in these streets. No raids of houses as far as he could see. It had gone off and the news hadn’t filtered through. It hadn’t gone off and there was no news. It had been found and defused, a press release shaped, clear roles assigned and the past flattened down: heroes, villains, survivors; everyone assigned their proper role and thinking in threes. He tried to find comfort in the fact that whatever had happened or not happened had by now happened or not happened. People wanted love, they thought it made them whole, but caring about other people was exactly what cracked you open. He cared and didn’t care. He felt cracked open now. He didn’t feel it until he thought it. It was the thought that shaped his fate. He was cracked.
As he got close to home a change of atmosphere occurred. His mind registered this in stages. First the scent of burning leaves. He breathed it in and hoped it would steady him. He liked the spice of kindling things. Then above a twitching street lamp a dark mass of shifting air. There were flecks of glitter within. Ash?
For a moment he wondered dumbly who would have a bonfire at this hour. Gradually the fog on his thoughts burned off and an upsurge in sensory detail came: siren noises getting louder; people moving in the street. He realised he’d been aware all along of an orange glow clinging to the bend in the road. The fire was nearer than he’d imagined.
He moved off the pavement, onto the stuttering white line. In the houses either side of him windows and porch lights flickered to life. Front doors were swinging open, more people waking up. They staggered and rubbed their eyes. He felt he was picking his way through an intricate dream.