It was pure in him and strong.
And Howlin’ Wolf was also an orderly man and a good boss — in him that was compatible with letting feelings out, with letting himself out. He could burn and sweat and shudder and wail and wail and wail when he needed it for the music. He could keep safe otherwise.
And he could feel the blues. Deep blues.
Which is, naturally, not about safety. But he squared the circle and certainly circled the square.
Jon felt that he was an orderly man and a good boss — his assessments did not undermine this belief.
Perhaps it is the blues I am feeling.
Jon grimaced swiftly. Like hell. I am all square and no circle, no matter what I try.
But I’m not a bad man. In my own way. I am not.
This is because I keep asking myself if I’m not. And I listen out for ribbon typewriters in the night. And I do, I do, I do what I can.
Typewriters, as we know, are these days the most secure option. They produce traceable, hard to access, discrete documents. The Russians ordered up thousands straight after Snowden. India followed. Germany. Wise beasts everywhere have shipped them in.
Taptaptap.
Peckpeckpeck.
Me, too. Back at home.
Tocktocktock.
The sound of modern caution.
The sound that I don’t hear at work.
Only in my dreams.
Taptaptap.
I am sorry for the hotel, Becky. I am sorry that I have these blues — these uptight white overcomfortable blues … and that’s the worst kind, baby.
But the hotel hadn’t really been his problem — not his pressing problem — the fight he started with his daughter on the plane had troubled him more. That’s what stole his sleep.
It was so plainly imbecilic as a course of action: get your only child alone and immediately criticise her boyfriend. No, not immediately. I mentioned that her shoes were great and that she looked well and wouldn’t this be fun and that we didn’t often get the chance. Then I started in with the ill-advised comments. Just after we were allowed to unfasten our seatbelts. Idiot.
‘You don’t like him.’
‘I’m not … that’s not what I’m saying.’
‘No, it’s what I’m saying. You’re barely civil to him. What about at my birthday party?’
‘At your …? I wasn’t … Did I do something wrong at your birthday party?’
‘You didn’t say one word to him.’
This seemed unlikely. Jon scrabbled back to an afternoon of blustery wind and having a headache on Becky’s little balcony, feeling sick due to unforeseen events — lots of her friends inside and shouting. It was good that she had so many friends. Otherwise you’d worry. Loud friends. ‘I … Didn’t I? It was an odd day. I think. Stuff was going on—’
‘At the office. That office eats you.’
‘I’m nearly done.’
‘Nobody stays as long as you have, not any more. You could have retired. You could be resting. You could be doing something you might like.’ She’d begun to change the subject and for some reason he hadn’t let her, even though stopping her was insane.
‘Well, you don’t …’ A gulp when he swallowed — this was his throat attempting to prevent him from screwing up, yet on he went. ‘You don’t … It’s that when you’re with him and with me, when we’re the three of us and having a meal, or something of that sort … I notice … It’s that …’
‘It’s that what?’
And he shouldn’t ever mention this, except she is his daughter and he does, he does, he does — in his veins and in his breathing and in his blue and buried heart — he does love her and that makes her happiness matter. ‘It’s that when you’re with him you seem not to speak. You stop saying things.’
‘Go on.’ Her tone a clear warning that he ought to jump out of the plane before doing any such thing.
But on he had stumbled. ‘Darling, it’s just that I have been around, alive, for a while and seen relationships — I’m not talking about mine, this isn’t anything to do with mine — seen what happens when the man does all the talking, when either partner does all the talking. I’ve seen what that suggests has happened already between two people … what it means when the woman can’t get a word in sideways and the guy …’ She was condemningly quiet and so he continued to dig his own grave — speaking while she did not and aware of the irony. ‘My generation of men, we had a hell of a job getting it right — the feminism thing — but we tried, we absolutely, not all of us, but we backed up what women were doing and we had no maps and that was — I’m not saying we did well — but that generation, men and women, attempted to change how partnerships went, or some of us did, and it wasn’t, it wasn’t about beautiful and intelligent women with wonderful futures sitting next to blowhard young men and just listening as if they haven’t a thought in their head—’
‘Blowhard.’
‘I don’t mean it as an insult. It’s not an insult. I was a blowhard, too. It’s automatic. He’s twenty-four. If you’re under thirty and have a penis, you’re a blowhard. It’ll pass. It doesn’t make him a bad person.’
‘So what does?’
‘He isn’t … I don’t think that he’s a …’
But I do think that he is a bad person. I kind of am completely certain that he is a bad person. I am aware that everything about him bespeaks a lack of consideration in many areas and with Rebecca in particular — the more intimate they are, the more he will harm her — and this makes me want to stab him in his balls and then his throat. I want to watch him bleed to death in agony and silence. Sorry. I do, though.
That is the shape of my moral high ground. I would claim it in less time than it takes me to draw this breath as a place of irrevocable mountaintop sacrifice.
‘Becky, I don’t want him to hurt you.’
‘Because I wouldn’t be able to tell if he was without you explaining? Because I’m a moron. Because I’m like you.’
Because you’re in love with him. You’re in love.
Moron is uncalled for.
You love him and he makes love to you and steals tenderness from you unsweetly I bet and by the time the shine’s gone off it, please Christ you haven’t married him. Or had a baby. It will end badly and I’m trying to spare you that.
Moron is …
His body sinking as it would if the engines had failed them and yet just as it was, where it was, only stirring gently in tranquil flight.
A baby.
OhGodababy.
Go on — ask if she’s pregnant — if she’s being careful. That’s the only mistake you haven’t made.
Moron was fair comment.
And she’d spoken very softly, been at the edge of inaudibility as the plane grumbled evenly around them, but he had perfectly heard when she said, ‘Not everyone doesn’t notice when they’re being tortured.’
He’d been nauseous for the remainder of the journey, got through customs and out of Berlin Tegel by the application of grim effort, almost as if his daughter were not there and he were managing alone. They’d checked into the haunted hotel — marble and cream foyer, chandelier, you couldn’t complain — in an ache of isolation — at least he had ached — and they’d not said night night. No kiss. He hadn’t even felt secure in mentioning when they might join each other for breakfast the following morning, as they ground up in the lift to their rooms. So he had to rise early the following day and sit and drink endless tea until she’d appeared and did sit facing him across his littered table, did smile, but only enough to indicate that he wasn’t out of trouble yet.