‘It isn’t the postcodes that matter per se, Jon — they are associated with reality.’ Rowan had emerged with, yes, unpleasant biscuits. Ones neither of them would eat. ‘London doesn’t like reality. We believe we can transcend its limitations.’ He set the plate down at the pool’s brink.
‘Reality is discourteous and should be avoided.’
Rowan nodded, deadpan. ‘The trouble with reality is, it never knows when to stop …’ Then what was an old joke between them became too tender, injured. ‘It’s intrusive.’ Rowan’s voice altering, softening, so they’d had to leave a little silence to settle each other and not become glum.
Rowan sipped his sage tea from its comfortable glass, as if he were in a more civilised age, and — being honest — Jon knew that Rowan consistently did still manage to create a more civilised age around himself. For six feet — give or take — in any direction from Rowan Carmichael, you were occupying space in something quite like the Renaissance.
But with Rowan it’s all Dante and da Vinci. No Borgias, no wars, no assassinations and Niccolò’s empty-souled prince only cited as a warning, not an inspiration. So not really the Renaissance in any comprehensive sense. You always had a downside with the Renaissance: Boccaccio wasn’t Boccaccio with no plague. How else would he trap all of his characters outside Florence, force them to tell enough tales to fill a book? The Decameron wouldn’t have worked if they’d simply learned their travel route was now impassable due to routine maintenance, withdrawal of maintenance, withdrawal of exorbitantly rented rolling stock, the intrusion of crack-addicted and incomprehensible youths, bent on destruction … It wouldn’t have worked as a story if they’d just gone off and thrown yet another party to pass their time. Not enough threat there to press them for truths and details, nothing beyond the perils of a dodgy barbecue, fire pit, hand-crafted alfresco pizza oven.
Which are anachronistic elements to introduce — Rowan always very harsh about that kind of thing. Precision — he insists on it.
Which is unforgivably anachronistic of him.
And I feel sometimes — very often — we are besieged, myself and Rowan. We cosset ourselves, peer out at what’s left of our golden hillside palazzo and watch the plague drift in, seed itself. Underneath the phoney scares and distractions there’s plenty of threat — it’s running with the big and clever London rats, all over the Junction. It just hasn’t washed up quite as high as Bishopsgate. Not really — it’s only on its way.
I’ve never been to Florence … never lifted my eye to the hills surrounding, the purply pink Tuscan hills … never picked out a villa, a palazzo, where the prosperous, the eloquent, the fragile might once have had themselves bolted away to exempt themselves from death.
Just another bloody conference venue, really.
Like Davos, but with intelligence and lyricism and no obligation to pretend one might wish to help others.
Jon had watched Rowan’s smile as it began to seem troubled again and, this time, enquiring.
Bolter — they used to call me that. Easier to say than Sigurdsson.
Bolter in the sense of my being a boy who runs.
Like I run from the idea of human beings succumbing slowly under provocations to fail, the tick of waiting, of daily signing, of the fictitious letters that do not summon them for customer interviews and therefore produce their Failure to Attend. There are a thousand unnatural shocks one can use to produce Closure of Claim.
I also do not imagine Decision-Makers and Cluster Managers sitting in off-the-peg splendour and hitting their Individual Performance Targets.
This is all part of the righteous hudud we must not question, or contemplate, the claim of our particular godless god.
In the lower lands, beneath the hillside, being trapped is the rule and not the exception — you and your stories are held there.
And it doesn’t matter.
This would all be terrible if it mattered. So it has to be what doesn’t matter.
Rowan was a friend — could most likely and truly be named as a friend: first a jarringly young and clever tutor and then a friend — and friends noticed if you seemed off colour and were indulging in fits of interior petulance and snapping instead of explanations.
My behaviour is unfair. I was always peaceful here. Rowan never shouted, never bullied.
So I should trust him, should have trusted him earlier and ought to at this point.
I should communicate.
But that isn’t what one does, is it? If one intends to be correctly English, one must brood on one’s list of catastrophes and be disgruntled. One must enjoy complaining, but only to those without power to assist, without the will. And, happily, no one does have the power, or the will to assist. Impotent rage: that’s the state to aim for. One must practise self-harm through the forging and hoarding of fears and through the embrace of unfeasible injuries, hotly anticipated. Present wounds should fester and be ignored. This is expected of others as surely as one must expect it of oneself.
The thing was, Jon didn’t want to communicate. He did just need to hide inside petty complaining — so he simply talked and talked, made noises about nothing: ‘I know — it’s property values … Weren’t we …? Were we? If we referred back to the postcode unreality … The virulent bubble of property values …’ Jon had paused as his thinking swayed inside his skull. ‘That … on which our economy is poised … We need landowners to have power, because otherwise where would we be? We’d be in a land where landowners didn’t have power, which would be disconcerting. So land must be worth something, everything, and the landowners must get richer and swell until they are Borgias … new Borgias … tiny and middle-ranking and towering Borgias … And we can rest sweetly in our beds, no matter what power we don’t have, because our floors and kitchen cabinets and damp courses and gutters and so forth are appreciating in theoretical value, while depreciating in actual value through wear and tear, but nonetheless there is appreciation taking place at fantasy rates in a shinier fantasy world. Unless we bought a council house and it rotted around us, or our neighbourhood fell into hell. Then we’re very screwed. And beyond that …’
Rowan sipped his tea and let Jon run, let him drag himself towards something like tears.
Jon had felt his body becoming breathless and starting a sweat. ‘And even if we’re not screwed that way, our precious bricks and repointing are only all very well if we don’t become homeless through some intervention from the catalogue of mischance, or don’t intend ever to move again and won’t then find ourselves forced to purchase somewhere else in London for a price which would buy us a small street in Liverpool. Because only London truly matters, it is where our Borgias live, where everyone’s Borgias live. Other areas and cities misunderstand power and ownership and must be chastised accordingly until they do better. And …’And it no longer seemed important to finish the sentence.
I sound angry and ridiculous.
‘Have some more tea, Jon.’ Rowan’s voice amused, but not mocking. ‘We consider solutions, though, don’t we? Isn’t that the best …? We never allow our description of what might dismay or overwhelm us to dismay and overwhelm us in itself. We assess the available information and generate alternatives … And we are implacable.’ A tired grin after this to acknowledge that he was quoting himself.