Jon slotted himself down the steps again, jogtrotting.
Is that what I feel? Rushed? Am I thinking of all of the everything I still have to do?
‘Sansom, you know that especially now I can’t help you. And I have to make that very clear. If you are not satisfied with my response, I genuinely regret that, but there’s no more I can do. By which I do mean precisely that there’s no more I can do. This wouldn’t alter if we were in the same room. And you shouldn’t have texted me and I hope that you haven’t emailed or that if you did, you bore the clarity of my position in mind.’
The Honourable gentleman currently under discussion is of a party and I cannot be of a party. The Honourable gentleman is subject to nervous difficulties, but that’s none of my business in the sense that you require. The Honourable gentleman once made a moderately painless speech to an audience of which I was a member, that’s all. The Honourable gentleman’s dogged insistence that my subsequent presence on other occasions would ensure smooth sailing and the free flow of elegant locutions is based on a false assumption. He believes that every time he opens his mouth in public and precipitates a catastrophuck it’s because I wasn’t there. This is untrue. He doesn’t fail because I’m never there, he fails because he always is.
‘To repeat, I can’t help. I can’t … But I can’t. Particularly now. We’re deep in the period of sensitivity and everyone has to be unimpeachably well balanced. Like a Toledo blade, as I used to be told. Acting as your Parliamentary Undersecretary of State’s lucky gonk isn’t being impartial, now is it …? We’re in purdah. At least, I am. And I can’t just be there when he makes obeisance before the press … I have my work to do … As a suggestion, it’s untenable in the particular and in principle and as a request. And beyond which, if he gets a gonk they’ll all want one.’
And since when did a Parliamentary Undersecretary of State get anything much beyond the headed stationery?
I am here to serve, of course, I am a servant … It becomes, though, difficult … It becomes, in an environment where change-bunching is a concept and we have to believe in and pander to such a thing as the garden-fence effect and cascade is deployed as a serious verb … It becomes difficult. I think I reached my tether, its end, became aware that I was tethered and did not like it, when I encountered my first zero-based review. I do not wish to be involved with the thing which is a zero-based review. Zero is an ugly word. The name of the Greek philosopher of all things lost to despair should be … Nemo Zero who lived in a burning barrel, close by the Abode of the Crows … I should mention him at some point — see if anyone admits they’ve never heard of him.
I think I should do that. I think so.
But then again, I can’t hear myself think. On occasions.
And then again, I don’t like it when I can. On occasions.
‘Sansom … Sansom … Sansom, would you like to explain yourself to my minister who is currently a little busy, what with that … that whole, what was it …? Yes, that whole upcoming general election distracting him from his usual devotion to your well-being and that of every other special advisor, no matter their department. Regards, by the way to your minister, I thought he did terribly well the other night and it was a tough situation for him.’
Always be nice about a special advisor’s minister. Their minister is the nipple at which they suck — he, or even she, will bring out the mammal in them — and they can’t help being fond.
The Mancunian is, perhaps, Sansom’s minister’s ugly and wet-brained child, the one they couldn’t sell to the circus — which is to say, not to a circus other than the one he now calls home: not to a proper circus that insists on its staff having skills — like tumbling, or eating live rats. All of which is not to be pondered.
‘Talk to him, to the Honourable Member … Then talk to him again … Don’t talk to me … Talk to someone who can help you. Please. Not me. I’m someone who can’t. Deep breaths, take deep breaths … I’m so sorry … Yes, you could ask my minister and if he were to tell me that I should assist, then I would try to see how we could do that.’
But he won’t, because he isn’t insane. I know there was something of a precedent set in Scotland, but purdah really should be purdah — I mean, it does matter a little, to democracy and so forth.
‘No, deep breaths, Sansom.’
It had been a while since he’d hung up on somebody who was swearing.
It felt good.
He paused at another door. His reflection bowed slightly and flexed its knees.
He nodded to it, watchful, but it didn’t take offence. He winked.
Some men have the face for that kind of thing. I don’t.
And he did need to be gone now. The plants had been watered, trousers must be fetched, borrowed, purchased, the office was … it waited. Things waited.
It’s only my servant’s nature, my servility, that means I’m here at all.
Val must have encountered — have come across, have had … there really were no verbs that didn’t end up leering once you’d put them in a sentence with Valerie — she must have been the innocent acquaintance of some other person who knew how to fill up a jug with water and then empty it out at horticultural locations, repeat as necessary. There had been no call for him to be the one. She’d made it his responsibility on purpose.
Because she knows it teases.
He trotted his way down to the hall, switched on her alarm, then pulled open — with wonder, bliss, relief, something — her front door and stepped outside. Then he duly swung the impeccably painted wood, pushed it back into its impeccably painted frame. Her forbidding selection of locks were duly thrown, expensive levers operating as required. His phone rang again and he could almost take the small din as a fit celebration of departure.
And it wasn’t Sansom.
And wasn’t any other kind of pressure or disturbance.
Thank God. Or almost that.
‘He got me … Yes, Sansom got me, Pete … I’m sure. I’m sure … Yes. He should know better. But they never do. And we’re an anachronistic, smug elite when they don’t need us and we should all be working in Croydon, what few of us are left, and then when they want us … Would be what I might say, but I don’t and didn’t. But one could.’ It was Pete Tribe from the office. A promising man, Peter. ‘And he shouldn’t have bothered you, Peter … He shouldn’t have bothered me. I’ve just got rid of him — one can always hope — and I’m on my way in and don’t worry about it, you did the right thing — only I have to change my trousers, so I need to go back home … No, no … Of course … We don’t have someone with a remit to provide gangsta slash hip-hop references in support of the notion that he was in some manner … The trousers? No, I was at home last night, but now I’m not … No, not that … I’m in Chiswick … At Val’s … No, she’s not here … No, it’s … No … I’ll be in as soon as I can … No, not that … Yes, bye.’
Jon turned at the brewery corner — sucking in the malty air — and started to lope for the Underground. Val’s had never been that handy for public transport. All this nonsense meant he was late and the Tube wouldn’t cut it, time-wise, and the rush hour was going to cripple any cab’s progress — if he could even find one. She’d made him have to deal with the rush hour. That was bad of her.