And there could be miracles for you also. Up ahead and beyond this now which is now. You try to think this.
But you are fully weeping when he finishes, when it is over.
There is that last shock of withdrawal and then you’re done.
You cannot sit up and be reasonable as fast as you would like.
Kate the nurse tells you to take your time. No one else tells you anything.
The gynaecologist has nodded and drifted away, perhaps left, you can’t see.
You lean back against the angle of this final chair and you are aware that you are sobbing, that something is still happening to you, even though they have stopped being in at you, being there and fiddling, being all over you and not stopping.
There is an amount of sympathy from Kate and murmurs from the student doctor and you can hear them both and you would rather not.
You do not want to.
This is, this is the stopit, I love you, stopit, I can’t, I love you, stop it, you don’t love me, you don’t love me, you don’t, you shouldn’t and stopitstopitstopitstopitstopit under my breath where he couldn’t find it, in under my breath.
In faith.
Out fear.
He found everything else.
You do not enjoy being hurt.
But you have been hurt.
I can’t help it if I don’t like this.
It keeps you naked, even after you are fully dressed.
I don’t like this.
In some stupid and nasty way, you have stayed naked for a long time.
Stopit.
He isn’t here but he might as well be.
You would rather not be reminded. That would be your preference.
Stopit.
There’s the shape of him in me.
You would rather not be reminded that you have gone on and lived — not lived wonderfully, but still lived. You’ve kept on for all of this time, been naked but keeping on, and you must therefore be remarkable.
Stopit.
You are remarkable and therefore you walk — gently walk — back to sit on the chair in the corner — where bad girls sit at school — and you draw round the curtain and you wipe your face using the tissue which the nurse pressed into your hand and you are therefore reminded, therefore remarkable, therefore reminded.
Stopit.
I know that the shape of me is bigger than the shape of him.
I do know that.
You are remarkable and reminded and gentle and pressed and a bad girl in a corner and not living wonderfully, but still living, has made you tired.
And you are trying to press your heart into your hand, so as not to be naked — and if you could do that you would be remarkable, but you can’t — and the nurse talks to you through the still-drawn curtain, ‘All right, Meg?’ and she reminds you that you’re not.
But you open your eyes and have to answer her, ‘Mm hm.’
And you do what you have to, you keep on.
And this feeling — it doesn’t go away.
10:57
BY THE RIVER, on the South Bank, a bleak day is punching between angles of concrete, sheering along walls to gather up pressure and speed. Heavy cloud is grinding overhead, fat with blue-black threat, although it may not rain. The February sky and the water are sorely depressing each other. The Thames is high and has turned the colour of wet iron, it is making a muddy and rusty heave up from its estuary, from perhaps a troubled sea.
Pedestrians are sparse and hurried. Some carry umbrellas they’ll find impossible to use in the bankside winds. They carry them anyway. There is still ice in the chinks and seams of the pavement. The heat of the year hasn’t woken yet.
Running along the line of the kerb, dodging, comes a youngish man, his arms outstretched, long hair flaming upwards darkly. His anorak is loose, broad-sleeved, and catches each gust of wind.
For long moments he is his own sail.
From time to time he leaps.
The air snags away his voice, shreds it, but sometimes it is still possible to hear that he is whooping, laughing.
But something in his tone suggests fury.
What few people there are avoid him.
Jon had masters. This was an unfashionable way to term his position, but he was a servant and that did imply masters, which had further implications. Although, strictly speaking, he served the Queen. He worked, after all, within Her Majesty’s Government. So he had a mistress, then.
Always the women.
But he was hired out, made available for the sake of practicality and the functioning of a stable and democratic state. He served his queen by serving the ministers who served her. He was the servant of servants.
A passed-around servant of servants, hand to hand.
His phone twitched. Another text, one of a series. But not Sansom-related.
He replied. Or rather, composed one compact and effective message, thought about it, erased it, paused to make another, adjusted it and then sent his final draft. He had to tuck his briefcase away safely between his feet and stand in a doorway to accomplish this. He sent another text. He frowned.
Jonathan Sigurdsson, the king of felicitous rephrasing.
Well, it is a skill.
He texted again. One letter.
He ignored the shake in both his hands, retrieved his briefcase and then strode out briskly again. It wouldn’t do, somehow, to rush, pound along the street, release that flavour of desperation. So he never did, never had in the recent past, except for that one time … Still, being brisk was permissible. It projected a firmness of purpose. Which he did have, both as an individual and as one of his kind — the men who make ideas into realities, who translate words into provisions, schemes, systems, ongoing experiences, lives.
Tell me what to create and I’ll make sure somebody creates it. Or at least investigates its creation.
Promise, cross my heart. Just let me loose and I will do it — I know how.
Jon was heading for Tothill Street again after a jaunt involving the purchase of pristine trousers. (Which wouldn’t fit that well — he had a longer leg than average and a deep, but narrow waist, in conjunction with what was termed a hollow back.)
Not hollow inside, not exactly, which is a mercy. Although that wouldn’t quite be a feature one’s tailor would see.
Not true — it’s just what any proper tailor sees — it’s why he tucks you up in special cloth and tries his best to make you look substantial. He understands that you need help.
Jon was aware that he suffered from areas of sagging — afflicting both the trousers and the man. But at least his bird-struck pair had been dropped in at the dry-cleaner’s and he was operational again.
10.58 — I’ve only been gone half an hour: that’s not bad for a round trip to buy temporary corduroy trousers. I am, as we must now all say, customer-facing and therefore unable to spend a day on show with — as previously established — a potentially lascivious inner-thigh stain.