Hidden in his inside pocket, Jon’s phone pulsed against his chest — a superfluous heart. He ignored it while his daughter’s arms stiffened slightly. Then the sodding machine began ringing. ‘I needn’t answer. I needn’t.’
Becky sighed in a way that scalded him and then she purposefully slipped away from her father, recoiled on to the sofa again and curled with her back to him. She didn’t speak, because she didn’t have to. He had failed her.
Jon lied while he fumbled the bloody phone out and took it in hand. ‘Becky, I said I needn’t. I don’t even want to. It won’t be …’ The caller display told him it was Chalice. ‘I don’t … I really …’ Nevertheless he stood up, paced to the window, the dark swim of others’ unguessed ideas perhaps making his mobile heavier than it should be. Then he did what he had to and let that dark come cruising in.
‘Hello, Chalice, yes … The meeting was fine, in the sense of his being intractable — but nobody sane would give Milner anything, he’s clearly out of control…. What do I mean? I mean he was deeply drunk and nasty at four p.m. I don’t think that’s normal … No, he didn’t say much beyond pretending to be Ed Murrow staring out at the gallant Spitfires and urging on the better cause, or—’
Jon looked across at Becky. Becky who was fine, who was excellent, but who didn’t know it. Chalice, meanwhile, pretended to be both the Kray twins at once and ear-burrowed for more than Jon could tell him, because there was no more to tell. The rendezvous had been almost entirely uninformative. They all adore gossip — unreliable information.
That’s all he wants. I’m safe.
He’s not throwing me up against a pressman to see if I bounce in some way that reveals my true nature, my leaking hands. He’s not.
Jon wanted Becky to sit up and look over to him and then he would be able to mouth love you at her and blow a kiss and make her know that he was hers entirely, truly, and that his work wasn’t coming between them.
Chalice then did what might have been expected, what a paranoiac might have thought was the result of a malevolent God’s special interest, or else a phone tap in combination with an evil mind. Chalice told Jon they should meet.
I can’t though. I can’t.
And, of course, the meeting was to be at seven thirty.
Which isn’t possible. Not at all.
‘There’s really no … I mean, calling it a debrief would be overstating how much I could pass on … No, really.’
His implication being, when he insists, that I can’t sort out inconsquential details from matters of weight. Bastard.
‘Seven thirty isn’t exactly convenient, Harry … eight … eight o’clock?’
Eight is worse … Why am I saying eight?
‘I …’ Jon’s ribs beginning to feel — he could imagine this forcefully — beginning to feel they were made of some heavy and grubby metal. ‘Eight o’clock, then. Yes … No trouble at all. No trouble … At your club … No, no trouble.’
Jon having to listen while Chalice’s voice passed on those three tinny little syllables — at my club. For Christ’s sake, whoever would still say such a thing?
‘Fine. At your club.’
Chalice ended the call and Jon was left holding on to nothing much.
He spoke to no one: ‘Fine. Yes, fine.’
At my club — the three most irritating words on earth. Just when we’d all moved beyond that kind of nonsense. At least I would like that to be true — clubs being dated, unnecessary and inappropriate in a time of conditionality and sanctions. But none of that stuff ever really leaves us, does it — we always have to function in a world where special perks for unspecial people get clawed back in again.
Upper, Middle, Lower, Under — no matter our class, we must all do our best to incur unnecessary expense. We must be fooled with glamour, or hints of advantage, or passable subsitutes for love — whatever are the most useful and readily available lies — as long as they cost us. We all of us buy something in the end — scratch cards, bespoke jackets, fake portfolios, fake insurance, fake repairs, fake warranties, fake affection, fake chances … the membership of this or that club.
We’re all in the Mug Punter Club. The Honourable Society of Sad Apes.
He soft-footed over to his daughter again and knelt.
Chalice’s club looks like a Stalinist fire station and is full of the worst military art I have ever encountered — and military art is an area rich in utter, utter crap.
He kissed the top of Becky’s head. He spoke to her and only her and only ever her and was not in any way apologising to a woman currently elsewhere while he said, ‘You’re beautiful. And you’re wonderful. And you’re smart and sweet and there is absolutely no one on earth who shouldn’t understand that and respect it and if they don’t then it means they’re no use, they’re all wrong, they’re just … They should never dare to come anywhere near you. If I didn’t make this clear then I should have — because I know men, I meet them all the time, they speak to me in the way men speak to men, I know their horrible fucking secrets…. It’s more important even than you think to get a good one. You deserve a good one.’
This did nothing but crank her breathing back up from a soft regularity of grieving and into another struggle, more sobs.
‘You will find someone extraordinary and they will be with you, really with you, and that will be extraordinary, too. I promise. I promise. I promise.’
He closed one arm over her, kept kissing her hair.
She was fighting, you could feel right through her how she was fighting and how she was brave.
I can stay here. No need to rush. Here and then Chalice. My duty being done.
He’d left his phone at his side and saw — Yes, why not? Because this is how today is running, like a contact sport with no rules I understand — Jon saw that, while Chalice’s call had progressed, an incoming text had made enquiries about a meeting at eight thirty, a meeting quite different to that involving Chalice. Chalice’s fucking fucking fucking meeting now superseding his prior commitment — a commitment about which he cared, one might say, deeply — and making it impossible.
This was slightly unfortunate in the way that contracting ebola would be slightly unfortunate — contracting ebola and then not noticing until one had already hugged everybody one loved.
Jon replaced the phone in his jacket pocket, having considered and then rejected the possibility of throwing it through a window.
I’m not built for this, not for anything that’s happening today.
I’m not built for …
He found one of Becky’s hands and kept a hold of it while settling himself to sit on the floor, cross-legged, his back leaning against the side of the sofa, his head pressing somewhere around Becky’s spine. He kissed her hand. It tasted of crying.
‘Oh, God. We’re a pair. We are … Oh, God.’ He didn’t wail, because — as previously established — this was not his day for wailing.
It would not be possible for Jon Corwynn Sigurdsson to wail. An older woman rides the 453 bus — the one which will eventually stop and rest itself at Marylebone. She is heading up west and over the river, perhaps: having some kind of Saturday outing.
Beside her on the double seat is a boy child of around seven. He is well behaved in the manner of children with parents of an age to be their grandparents. He has a certain formality. His jersey and coat are neat and he wears newish leather shoes which may be meant for school. His trousers — which may also be meant for school — have anticipated someone more substantial and they make him kick his legs mildly, swing his feet, while studying the generosity of blue material in which he’s hidden. He tugs up the orderly crease that rests over his right thigh and then watches it drift back down. He tugs up the other crease and watches again.