For an instant he remembered watching a tourist couple posing for each other, turn and turn about, grinning for the camera in front of St Paul’s annual plantation of war-memorial crosses …
As striking a backdrop as any. No meaning required.
Once your wars have been rebranded, re-rebranded — in the end any possible meaning wears away, or simply withdraws and leaves you to it.
Teeth and smiles.
That’s all you want in a photo … Or in a war.
The portraits of current campaigns will have to show descending drones, perhaps the faces of their operators. The instant of accurate annihilation immortalised on canvas in a blossoming of flames — not the instant when the child runs out and all is beyond recalling. The soldiers won’t be there, because we prefer to wage wars without them, such people being servants of the state in which we no longer believe and, likewise, a concept of nationhood we actually should abandon in favour of more exciting definitions involving areas of consumption, zones of commercial influence.
Can I betray my nation, if my nation no longer exists? What if there is no social contract and only a series of punitive arrangements forced upon me by supranational entities? What if these entities have their own, ideologically acceptable armed forces and an admirable ability to float on in glory and in light, high above any taxation or legal restraint? In that case, what is treason? One might ask that. One might.
The painting was giving him a headache, either that or his day was giving him a headache — his day in combination with his personality.
Does anyone truly believe they can outrun history, break free from reality, become transcendent, never pay any kind of price …? Running in camouflage, running in pullovers … Both sets of figures displaying the danger inherent in long memories and immoderate belief. Long hair to keep you safe on the streets, short back and sides to mark you as a target … The occasional civil servant blundering off to Derry, fretting about car bombs and trying it on in a mumble with squaddies, having a go at quoting equivalent rank … Those were the days. So I’ve heard.
I am the civil-service equivalent of a captain — in a fog with the light behind me.
As if …
Jon sniffed, swallowed.
Gets it all out of the system, before I need myself to seem composed.
It’s best to feel I’m simply hiding a pissed-off rant and nothing more … Play the passed-over man. So many reasons that I’m passed over and I truly should be, but let’s agree that it’s currently down to Valerie, to women, to the mail drop, the courting and maybe one odd conversation I had with another man’s wife in 1987.
In 1987 — that long ago — some woman, somebody’s wife, told me things and I paid attention and I tried to …
I asked questions and was quietly told that I shouldn’t, not thereafter, and also the conversation I thought I’d had with somebody’s wife … Well it hadn’t happened. I was mistaken.
And nothing was sexual.
Nothing is ever sexual.
Nothing is ever said or ever has been, or ever could.
So I stopped asking questions and I’ve behaved as a good boy ought to ever since, as far as any department oversight can know.
I am safe. Look at me, please, examine — I’m so safe.
I am not a manifestation of civilian treachery, civilian threat.
‘Like it, do you?’ Chalice was hamming up the military precision of his walk as he cleared the doorway and crossed the muffling depth of black and fawn carpet.
All soundless is his progress — see, but do not hear where he comes.
It’s somehow terribly tasteless for the likes of Chalice to sound as if they’re walking when they walk — audible effort is something for the other ranks, the boot-wearing classes.
Or it’s meant for the high-heeled accompaniments to one’s evening — gowns and bags and running the show when they can, grabbing their old boys by the cock and leading them round … Not quite admirable, but I can see their point …
Alternative sources of enjoyment for the quiet-footed gentleman — well, they’re entirely silent. At all times. Ask no questions, hear no silence.
Jon didn’t spring to his feet like a well-trained subordinate when Chalice manifested. For one thing, Jon was weary. ‘I’m sorry?’ He was inordinately weary. He didn’t want to shake hands. He didn’t want to interact. He just wanted to sit.
‘Got your eye on our painting there, Jon. Like it? Quite an engagement at the time. Although the regiment gets no credit.’
Chalice playing up how much he was at home here, rising on the balls of his feet, stepping, swivelling.
At least Val left my cock entirely out of it in every sense. I should send her a card and thank her.
‘One does hope to be better appreciated.’ Harry Chalice, former man of action — although what action exactly was hard to ascertain — continued with what he surely imagined was an air of amiable dominance. ‘Unpopular wars — they still have to be fought. In fact, they demand our attention rather more than the easy sells. I think the public understand that better now, don’t you? Efforts to put the military view at the heart of our national conversation — they’re really bearing fruit.’
He only does it to annoy.
‘Hearts and minds,’ Jon told him, not rising to the bait.
Chalice paused overly near Jon, perhaps in an attempt to make him stand.
Or perhaps it was an expression of disrespect. Most likely that.
You can present your crotch to me as often as you like — I’m never going to blow you.
‘Hearts and minds, Jon. That’s right. Although if you’ve got their hearts, you don’t really need their minds, do you?’
Naturally. When you’re in love you’ll do anything you’re asked.
‘Harry, it’s been a long day and I have another appointment …’
Chalice backed away enough to simply be a man standing over his inferior colleague.
He’s going to, isn’t he? He’s going to …
And he did unfasten his nastily tight jacket and spread it apart, set his hands on his hips. ‘One of your many, Jon?’ He was showing Jon the full horror of an old-school pair of close-cut trousers: they hinted at cavalry britches, hugged the just slightly too generous thighs, while maintaining the emphatic line of their creases and deftly holding the neat little parcel where Chalice kept his sex.
An officer blithely at play in the city. The prefect at play in the biggest school on earth, the one he never needs to leave, coat pegs and name tags all the way, from prep school to the House of Lords. All the way in all suitable directions. And nobody gets expelled, not any more, not really.
Although I did hear Sandhurst nearly spat him out. In fact. Not much loved. If we were dealing with facts.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Jon happy to ignore the reference to Sophia, to Lucy — especially to Lucy. Jon delighted to not play along.
‘One of your pen pals, Jon?’