‘Leipzig.’
‘Really? We thought it was Heidelberg.’
Good cloth in his jacket, but I hate the London cut. He’s paid too much for a name on his inside pocket and the pinch-waisted silhouette of a man with breasts. Those cavalry-officer preferences will out. None of it indicates good judgement. Next thing, he’ll be wearing the label on his sleeve.
Chalice fixed his gaze somewhere on the wall behind Jon’s left ear and semi-whispered, ‘We need someone who slightly knows him. Uncontaminated by prior exposure and yet familiar.’
Jon’s left ear tingled in response.
The Minister continued to not speak, remaining authoritatively distant and — who could doubt it? — mulling thoughts which would be all the more impressive for going unexpressed.
Jon rubbed at his uneasy ear, coaxing it not to be foolish.
And if you don’t speak during a meeting then you can honestly confirm — if you absolutely have to later on, when asked by some passed-over backbencher, lop-eared audience member on Question Time, or so forth — that you didn’t in any meaningful sense attend the meeting, never said a word. Just offered your shit-in-a-sock.
‘I was preoccupied with family matters of a pressing nature and cannot recall the conversation, in which I took no part.’
So whatever this is about, it’s toxic. And yet he’s here …
Jon offered, neutrally, ‘Milner the journalist.’
‘That’s right.’ Chalice began to sound as if he were addressing an especially dim select committee. ‘Milner the journalist.’
‘I’m not a friend of his, to be precise, even slightly, no.’ Jon nodding and realising the Mancunian Candidate, or most probably Sansom, had reached out to hand him some Frodo or other. And I will be expected to carry my dreadful burden out across the wilderness and then Do Something Terminal About It.
‘Although I would like to help …’ The Minister’s desk — Jon was apparently staring at the desk now, so I must be downcast for some reason — the desk seemed to be of a very fine quality.
Better than in my department.
The surface has an almost mystical sheen.
And is giving me a headache.
There is an outside possibility that I am mistaken, simply experiencing a new symptom of extreme stress, but we’ll set that aside.
When I say ‘we’ I mean ‘I’, but I am in need of company and so present myself as if I am a group. I have noticed that others, when under pressure, will often replace ‘I’ with ‘you’ — as if they would rather outsource their concerns to random third parties. I think it’s a good sign that I don’t try to do that. Team player, Sigurdsson. Even if I’m a team of one.
My forearms are itching.
Jon briefly immersed himself in an opaque pause of the sort a man becomes used to producing when his wife is often indiscreet and he must therefore often be diplomatic. He imagined he could feel the heat of his phone, right there in his jacket’s inside pocket — he tried to think of it as a lifeline instead of a burden. There was a letter in there, too. Its presence made the phone and the office and Chalice and the bovine Minister seem a shade less oppressive. And even very minor improvements were always appreciated.
While Jon concentrated on yesterday and being with flower beds and secure, he said, ‘Milner was in Heidelberg, yes, that’s right. We had a drink then. One drink. If I remember correctly.’
‘And I’m sure you do. It wouldn’t be like you not to remember correctly, Jon. Unless you’re tired. Are you very tired? Been over-doing it?’
With my many women? No, I haven’t. No, I have not.
‘Come in straight from country pursuits?’ Chalice eyeing the corduroy trousers with a lack of benevolence.
‘No, not that. I was simply … And something happened to my …’ Jon breathing for a moment to find his place. ‘Milner is foreign stories, isn’t he? Not domestic. Trots off to hellholes and pretends he’s an aggressive, drunken Brit — asks immoderate questions of one and all, while they are incautiously embarrassed for him, or making fun. Manages terribly well in that regard. Then when he’s come round in the morning he notes down what he’s heard, or transcribes it, or whatever, and releases it as and when. One of the type who go about shouting from the moral high ground, or at least a good set of steps.’
Chalice produced a smile that would not occur in nature. ‘That’s the very Milner. You do remember. And his alcoholic camouflage has indeed become, shall we say, ingrained. People don’t seem to trust him on overseas assignments any more. He says things the wrong way for ITN … and his BBC boats were burned long ago …’ He paused to be happy about himself. ‘The BBC — they burn more boats than the Byzantine navy … Another man might move into books, but Milner seems to be unlucky in that regard, too. There’s the discourtesy while in his cups, that’s a factor — even publishing won’t quite put up with it. He seems to call people a cunt rather often … Which one can’t, can one? One can’t use the word cunt. A cunt out of context …’ Chalice gave Jon what was presumably space to speak with some kind of expert insight about the sexual organs of women and why they shouldn’t be used as terms of abuse, or pronounced by a Jermyn Street sociopath as if they were inevitably infectious.
Pity poor Mrs Chalice. Poor Amanda who never looks that far from screaming.
‘I never use the word myself.’
‘Secret of your success …?’
And now I do have to allow him eye contact. Plain and uncontrived — because, sod him, I was already good at this while he was still being taught how to take a salute and order Scousers to shovel horse shit and pinprick the silver polish from the fiddly bits on their breastplates. I’ve been doing this for a long lifetime and I’m still good at it. Even in my current circumstances. Even in corduroy bloody trousers which are, of course, unsuitable — I do know that. ‘I really wouldn’t know, Harry.’ I can call him Harry. It’s not inappropriate. Especially when he’s trying to be East End. ‘I’ve never used the word.’ All he knows about the East End would be from some heavily curated jaunt into Hoxton, or suchlike. ‘As a word — even in frank moments of intimacy.’
As if I, dear God, get to have any.
‘It seems irretrievably degraded, Harry, in a manner that offends. To call someone a cunt …’
And I would, I would, I would and that someone would be you, Captain Harry.
‘… is something I would find doubly offensive, given that it implies there is something essentially wrong about part of a woman’s body.’
Designer ale and hand-crafted pie and mash with no one who might alarm him by being too discordant, or calling his bluff — that’s Harry’s style. A little excursion for a change of air. Like Valerie and her flamingos. But with less screwing.
‘I could be mistaken, of course, Harry.’
‘That’s an opinion, Jon. That’s an opinion. And I’m sure it has brought you success.’ And Chalice actually, really, truly did lick his lips. ‘So.’ Before making a meal of getting down to business: the frown, the even more upright posture, the carefully illustrative hands. This was him in operational mode. ‘Jon, we’d like you to have a little chat with Milner. Catch him after lunch. We think he’s recoiled and gone off-piste, having nowhere else to go, and is trawling on the bottom in home waters. It isn’t a matter of party preference — we have good reason to believe that he is feral in all directions. Hardly democratic in the run-up to an election — one drunk deciding the issue by throwing his shit about like an ape.’