The Knives

by Richard T. Kelly

  ‘David, you can’t march into this house and lay down the law like that.’

  ‘My voice is superseded now, is it? Other voices count more?’

  Jennie’s eyes narrowed. ‘It’s my house, David. My rules. Since you ask, as a matter of fact, Nick agrees with me. Why you have to bring him into it … though I should have known it was coming.’

  ‘That’s a cheap shot, isn’t it? The point is Alex. I don’t dispute you’re with who you want to be with. So am I. We’re grown-ups, right? The point is Alex.’

  He had seen a flicker in her eye, and he held her gaze, but when she spoke she sounded nothing but impatient. ‘Obviously the point is Alex. But also, your usual view that you always know best.’

  ‘C’mon, can you not see he needs to pack it in, Jennie? He can engage with politics without ruining his future before he’s even got going. You know what’ll happen down this road, he’ll end up with a criminal record, and for what?’

  ‘Alex is sensible.’ Jennie sighed deeply. ‘Are you sure it’s not your own future you’re fretting about, David?’

  Blaylock felt the blow as only this woman knew how to land them. ‘That’s a rotten thing to say, Jennie. How can you say that?’

  ‘Because it’s a wicked world, as you’ve never tired of saying.’

  ‘Well, it is that. And I tell you what, if Alex gets dragged into the spotlight – arrested or whatever? Yeah, the press will love having a big old stick to beat me with, but do you not think I’m fucking well used to that by now? And it’ll not hurt me nearly as much as it will him, Jennie. So don’t act like you can just turn a blind eye.’

  ‘David, there’s no “blind eye” here. Please don’t try and raise the spectre of neglect, okay? Because there will never, ever be a right time for that, not from you.’

  ‘I want to speak to Alex,’ he said firmly.

  ‘I’m here …’ The voice issued from behind the wall of the arch between front and rear living rooms. Now Alex stepped into sight, still in the dark garb of the demonstration, his features clenched but exuding a clear resolve.

  Blaylock recovered himself. ‘Son … you know what? Smashing windows, graffiti … it might get you an easy cheer off of certain types but you need to realise all you’re helping is the status quo. You’ll not change a damn thing like that – not in a democracy, no chance.’

  Alex was shaking his head. ‘I didn’t smash anything, Dad. I didn’t do anything wrong.’

  ‘Why wear a mask, then? What are you afraid of?’

  ‘I’m not afraid of anything.’

  You can say it, Blaylock thought instantly. You’re afraid of me. He shook his head, looked to Jennie, felt the hopelessness, the distance in the silence between them.

  Finally, quietly, he said, ‘Well, son. This road you’re on? Be sure you understand where it’s headed. Don’t start what you can’t finish. Because there are some things, you know … a late apology won’t cut it.’

  Alex stared back at him. ‘I hear you,’ he said, insouciant.

  Blaylock looked again at Jennie – who looked aside – then at his watch, a gesture he regretted in an instant.

  *

  He reached the National in the nick of time, having fired off a text to assure Abby as much, but as he bolted from the car his temples were still pulsing, he thirsted for a strong drink, and wondered scratchily how long he could endure an evening of unfamiliar Shakespeare without medication. Still he pressed on through the Olivier Theatre’s doors at 7.29 into a darkening auditorium of murmurs and coughs, and he and Andy performed their merry dance as pre-arranged, Abby rising from the last seat of the back row to let Andy in, then bumping along one such that Blaylock could slump in on the end beside her. He took a moment to survey the crowd – an ageing, well-tended lot, it seemed, an inherited audience propping up a moribund form. But as the stage lights sprang up across the great Olivier stage he felt Abby’s cool hand slip into his, and his spirits lifted.

  Minutes later he was vexed anew – thirst returning, head newly sore – as the stage was thronged by a thespian approximation of an angry placard-waving mob, their querulous voices damning some hateful politician. Soon enough a smooth-talker was trying to calm them down, but Blaylock sensed what was coming. Presently the object of their opprobrium marched into the fray in a matt-black breastplate, evidently a soldier–statesman, just as vividly a blowhard, beet-red in the face, veins bulging in his neck, hair tossing about his forehead.

  Blaylock felt Abby stroke his arm lightly, sensing something meant in the gesture. The play, after all, had been her choice.

  Unengaged, unable to recline or relax, Blaylock let his mind slip into work matters, and his attention to the play was fitful. He gleaned, though, that the fortunes of the black-clad Coriolanus constituted the whole of the piece, the drama arising from the degree of the warrior’s willingness to address popular grievances and grease his way past politicians more facile than he. The odd bit of fluent verse-speaking pulled Blaylock in – but he groaned as Coriolanus feigned to capture a city single-handed with a great deal of silly choreographed sword-waving.

  Still, when the mob reappeared to pontificate on their victorious general’s virtues, Blaylock felt the sore temptation to stand up and berate them for a shower of cowards – and chastened himself for the degree that he knew he was being manipulated. Abby, he felt sure, had known all of this was coming. And by now, having steeled himself not to glance her way admiringly too often, he found himself not greatly caring to.

  *

  They made their separate ways back to her apartment under cover of dark. He exited the Jaguar lugging his red box, knowing Andy would keep watch outside until around midnight, by which time he expected to be curled around Abigail beneath her cool bed-sheets, his face pressed into the bergamot-scented softness of her hair.

  First, though, came what he felt to be a curious mime of domesticity, as he sat on a tall stool in her tiny but immaculate kitchen, perusing papers from the red box and nursing a large glass of white wine that she poured for him before turning to the griddling of scallops and the mixing of a dressing for salad leaves. Mark Tallis had drafted some remarks for him to deliver at the Criterion Westminster Awards tomorrow night, and he read them with growing dismay. A forced jocularity was the spirit of the thing, and gags were not Mark’s forte.

  She asked after his day. He gave her fragments, as no part of it had been anything he cared to revisit. Offering some impressions of the ruckus in Parliament Square he withheld any reference to Alex and the reason for his late arrival to the theatre, telling her instead of the injured youth he had seen being so fiercely defended from the clutches of police by his pious girlfriend.

  ‘It did strike me’, he said, after a big gulp of wine that made his eyes water, ‘how easy it is for people to get badly hurt at these things. The cops have plenty of barriers on hand, but really they could do with a few more medics.’

  He was thinking of Alex, weighing the resentment he felt toward the boy against the natural desire to prevent any harm ever befalling him. Lately, he couldn’t deny, he had wanted Alex to suffer some rude awakening, some pointed encounter with the sharp end of reality. Yet to imagine his son in any real distress was a plaintive thing that clutched at his innards.

  Abigail wiped a sharp knife clean then wiped her hands on a cloth. ‘I hadn’t pictured you as so much the bleeding heart.’

  He grunted. ‘Yeah, well. When people are hurt you have to help them, even if they’re the enemy. Especially if they’re the enemy. That’s how the British Army’s made its name the world over.’

  ‘One way it’s made its name.’ She smiled without giving him the favour of her gaze.

  ‘I’m serious. I saw it umpteen times. Early on in Belfast we got into a gun battle in Andersonstown – spotted a bunch of Provos holed up with guns trained on us, we fired first, went into the building after them and found them bleeding all over the place. And you wouldn’t believe the pains we took to patch them into shap
e. We shot ’em up, yeah, but then we shipped ’em out.’

  ‘“Shot ’em up” …?’

  She was still immersed in plating for two, yet her manner seemed to him as one whose windbag boss had come over for supper, to be indulged and politely suffered. It took another moment or two for him to feel his disapproval tick up to the familiar register.

  ‘Yes, “shot ’em up”. It was their plan to shoot holes in us so I – we, my men and I – we fucking shot them up instead.’

  She turned to him, bearing two identical servings on ivory dishes. ‘Okay, David. Okay? They’re not here now.’

  *

  After they had eaten – the work of mere minutes – she sat in an armchair across from him in her smart low-lit living space, the programme from the theatre in her lap, a small smile round her lips that rather maddened him, reminding him as it did of her interviewing mode. He gestured to the full bottle of wine between him, successor to one that he seemed to have polished off by himself.

  ‘Am I going to drink all of that?’

  ‘I don’t know, are you?’ She leaned and poured a splash into her glass. ‘I was quite struck by the play. Were you?’

  Blaylock shrugged. ‘Mixed bag.’

  ‘How did you rate his political acumen? Coriolanus? Do you suppose a fellow like that could function in Westminster today?’

  Blaylock swigged wine and shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t last five minutes. His own man and all that, but … a politician can’t be that badly divorced from the mass of the people. Even though the play takes them all for bloody fools.’

  ‘Ah, then you agree with the guy writing in the programme notes.’ She read aloud. ‘“While ostensibly proposing a debate between authoritarianism and the democratic will of the people, Shakespeare contrives to make the case against democracy near irrefutable. He has Coriolanus embody a standard the plebs can’t get close to: the great man whose word must be heeded, since he knows for a fact, by bloody experience, what the proles can’t possibly imagine from the purview of their meagre little lives. This is a devilish contention, but then in writing Coriolanus Shakespeare was of the devil’s party, and probably knew it …”’

  ‘Who said that?’

  ‘Nick Gilchrist. The filmmaker?’

  Blaylock sniffed, feeling his foot tap the carpet as though it were his tail.

  ‘Yeah, I interviewed him once. He lives just a few streets from here, on Elgin Crescent? Quite a fascinating man. Fairly political.’

  ‘You mean “political” as someone who has a bunch of opinions? As opposed to a disposition to try and do politics.’

  Abby’s eyes narrowed amusedly. ‘So you know his work?’

  ‘He’s actually my ex-wife’s current … partner.’

  ‘No! Really?’

  ‘You sure you didn’t know that?’

  ‘How would I? It’s not general knowledge, is it?’ She sat up with a new keenness, so making Blaylock conscious of how he had rather slumped into his chair, wine glass to his chest. ‘It’s not like you tell me anything, David. Or do you think I’ve been “researching” you?’

  ‘C’mon. You did a bit of research, right? It’s your livelihood.’

  ‘I’d have said things have developed a bit between us since. To a point, anyway. No, in terms of your, oh, “private life” – I’ve just been assuming there are things I’m not to know.’

  ‘I’ve told you,’ he said with a sigh, ‘a fair old bit about myself, Abby.’

  ‘Yes. Things you might tell a journalist, if only to put them off.’

  ‘Well,’ he gestured, vexed, ‘how much do I know about you?’

  ‘David, you could ask me anything. I’m not ashamed. The fact is you’ve hardly asked me a thing since the first night we met.’

  ‘You’ve been counting? Look – I’ve thought we have a pretty good understanding of one another. But maybe not.’

  She sat back with a rueful head-shake, supporting her chin in her hand. ‘I don’t know, David … What’s going on?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What have we got, you and me?’

  He met her gaze while casting around inwardly for some rejoinder. She was right, of course. He had entered this romance with barricades carefully erected around the area nearest to his heart. Now she was only pressing him for the closeness any lover would expect. He remained resistant. And yet now, quite suddenly, he sensed a familiar kind of crumbling-unto-collapse in their relations, and the idea that a dismal day might now conclude in such fashion was abruptly, unutterably depressing to him.

  ‘Listen … I’m sorry. Really. The disturbances today, in town? My son Alex was there, I saw him, in the thick of it. I went to see him and Jennie tonight, it’s why I was late … The whole thing’s bloody awkward and it’s just … preying on my mind.’

  ‘Good lord.’ She looked at him closely, clearly computing. Finally she said, ‘Was Alex hurt? Or arrested?’

  ‘No, god no. He made a sharp exit at just about the right time. But he’s … he’s drawn to that kind of, y’know, protest politics? And I’m not sure he knows what he’s getting into.’

  ‘What does his mother think?’

  ‘Oh, she’s big into fighting for rights, Jennie. And she doesn’t think Alex should suffer – I mean, be deterred from things – just because I’m his father. The thing is, but, it could be trouble for him.’

  ‘Trouble for you, too.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what his mother reckons and all. But it’s not the issue.’

  ‘A factor, though. People love a dysfunctional family in politics. The higher the better. Like Reagan and his kids? This would have those elements. The only thing would top it is if Alex became a ballet dancer …’

  Blaylock was mildly amazed to note her new animation, how she now took a keen sip of wine, with a rapt look on her face for which he didn’t much care.

  ‘Have you thought it through? Worst-case scenarios? Say, if he got nicked swinging off the statue of Churchill?’

  ‘It’s not something I want to … brainstorm. This isn’t my idea of useful speculation. It’s not helping, Abby.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m just trying to get my head round it. Your problem.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you sound almost curious to see it happen. I mean, Jesus.’ He lurched from his chair, realising he had nowhere particular to go in the small space, so finding himself looming over her. ‘Jennie doesn’t see a problem, it’s true, but you, you appear to relish it.’

  She closed her eyes and turned her head away as if abruptly tired of seeing him before her. ‘Oh David, c’mon. It’s like you just want a fight tonight, any old fight, and I’m here so I’ll do.’

  ‘I don’t want a fucking fight.’

  ‘Sure about that?’

  She was correct insofar as he felt little now beyond the twinges of irritation, the tenseness of his brow, the desire to prolong the storm.

  ‘Would you rather I left?’

  She rolled her eyes, her shoulders slumped. ‘It’s your decision, David.’

  ‘Okay. Fine.’ He paced to the kitchen, collected his jacket, hefted his red box. She did not move from her chair. He looked at her from across the kitchen island. She looked back at him and said nothing. She was – he had known it from the start – a tough customer.

  *

  Outside Andy was clearly surprised to see the boss stomping back across the street, but he made the call to Martin, and Blaylock then endured a chastening drive back across the river to Kennington.

  He was aware he was wincing reflexively, muttering to himself, cursing under his breath, putting his hand to his face. He was aware, too, that Andy watched him silently from the corner of one eye, and Blaylock sensed some unacceptable pity there, and so tried to pull himself round, contemplating some light remark to relieve the gloom of the car. But nothing came, nor by effort of will could he seem to stop the physical tics afflicting him.

  The squabble he had found himself in was nothing new – indeed it was st
arting to seem like his fate. What was novel was the loss of face he felt this time round. A line was running round his head – Nietzsche, if he remembered right, some of whose sayings had been hits with his Sandhurst contemporaries, especially the one about near-death experience somehow making one ‘stronger’ rather than massively debilitated. The one Blaylock had in mind was more slippery. If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which recurs.

  ‘Character’ – he associated it with virtue, constancy. But increasingly it seemed to him a cage. I have a Problem, he said to himself. A Problem. ‘When will you do something about your Problem, David?’

  He had never cared to talk about it. There had been times when he felt he had more or less psychoanalysed himself, and not unsatisfactorily, either. Yet still his typical experience recurred, and he did nothing else to ward it away. He had to ask himself: was it fear? Faintheartedness, for sure. For when he conjured the thought of ‘seeking help’ it was accompanied immediately by thoughts of the House – gossip round the House, insinuation in the House. That prospect, he realised, did raise an alarm in him – and to be so conscious of his spinelessness was to realise, too, however belatedly, that he would now do something about it.

  3

  The request was put simply and casually to Geraldine, that she secure him an appointment around 11 a.m. at his local surgery, but with a female GP – preferably Dr Quayle, whom he remembered to be reliably detached, even semi-distracted. He told himself it was a decision from which he might still retreat if the day’s business turned bad.

  In fact the morning brought heartening news from Gavin Ball up in Dudley. The little girl who had suffered the nail in her temple was recovering from a successful surgical removal; meanwhile the manhunt had narrowed to a single individual, his face reconstructed in photo-fit from CCTV. ‘We’ve put it out there and we hope for help from the public.’

  He repaired to one of Level Three’s soundproofed ‘study pods’ and closed the door, resolved to phone Abigail and try to repair the damage. He had the words prepared. His call, however, went straight to voicemail and so he recited into a void. ‘Abby, it’s David. Last night … I want to apologise, I was out of order. I got out of hand. The things on my mind, they are what they are but I … obviously should not have lost my temper like that. Please call me when you can.’