And then, because today was today and because he needed distracting and because he could, because he could, because he could … Jon dropped his head and tried, ‘Well, you know me, Harry.’ He composed the properly knowing expression, the smile that tasted of contempt — the one with which he was always eventually confronted at parties, functions, receptions — the boys’-club sign of membership, the evident assurance of the man who knows women and finds them wanting, renders them wanting. The effort was distasteful enough to make him queasy for a breath. Then he looked up and showed himself to Chalice, hoped his nausea would pass, or at least not show ‘Yes … you know me. A man has to have an interest. If it isn’t the money, well then it’s the honey.’
Absurd bullshit — and the bigger lies are easier, are exhilarating — keep his eyes, let him think this is your true self, the only secret you’ve been hiding.
Jon let his mouth shrug slightly and then added, ‘We play … And they play, too, the ladies. They do know how, always have … They just want the rules skewed in their favour. They want it to be noted they’re unhappy and put-upon. Duly noted. And then they pretend they don’t welcome our attention and haven’t got us on eggshells and taken our jobs.’
Steady, steady, don’t be completely preposterous.
‘It’s all just the usual game, though.’ He nodded to the painting, as if it were a beach scene, a domestic interior evoking only casual nostalgia. ‘Back then — a young chap like yourself, you wouldn’t remember — we operated honestly. Men and women knew what was expected and they had a sense of humour. There was the pill, the girls got that. There was Alex Comfort — she could read the manual, see the pretty drawings, tasteful. Nothing “Readers’ Wives” about it.’
Val thought Comfort was grotesque — no pun intended. Sketches of some hairy European couple being happy and exchanging artisan pleasures … not quite her thing.
Jon continued, the words dizzyingly untrue and therefore thrilling, ‘No one, so to speak, tied anyone down.’
Being Chalice must always feel like this — the exhilaration of deceit.
‘If objections were made, they were just signs of her paranoia — they were her hormones kicking in. What we currently have to put up with …’
It seemed Chalice wasn’t sure about this. He didn’t react.
Come on. You want to believe it. Come on.
And Jon felt the pressing need for a short Scotch, while feeling also as if he had drunk one.
Then a grin emerged. Chalice had decided to be glad.
Flowering like nightshade, like hemlock, like flames.
Chalice sniggered. ‘Well, Jon … I did wonder. We have wondered … What does he get out of it? If anything? Where does Jon’s heart lie? What occupies Jon’s mind? You were a bit of an enigma. Which is never wise.’
‘Now you know, then.’ Jon being as brisk as he could, although he realised that Chalice wouldn’t let things lie without kicking about a little.
‘A man who lets his wife screw around like that, who can’t stop her — that man has no balls. That man is wanking with an empty sack. Is what I thought.’
Jon setting his fingernails into the palm of the fist Chalice can’t quite see. ‘Open marriage. Not what you’d want to make public. Or I chose not to.’ He could feel himself sweating slightly and couldn’t work out how not to. ‘Valerie had other opinions …’
‘You chose the dignified option.’ Chalice nodding with only a trace of irony. ‘Good for you.’ And there was the reptile flicker of a darker smile. ‘Although not good for your career. If you’d talked to us …’ And then another expression, the one Jon had wanted to see.
The one that says, ‘Thank fuck, you’re as dirty as me in your sad, old way. This means we can do business and that’s grand, because doing business is all there can be, or ever will be, world without end …’
Jon modulating his tone to reflect a manly desire for cooperation and common sense: ‘I don’t like to be beholden, Harry. But — if you wouldn’t mind — I’d be very grateful if this went no further …’
I’ll tell you I trust you — when you cannot conceivably be trusted — and so you’ll trust me.
That’s the thing about your kind of man — you lack imagination, so you do great harm. But because you lack imagination, you can be — in the long run — easily and inexorably undone. As ruined as a Lloyd’s name, as a Madoff client — remember what happened to them? There are so many breeds of mug punter. There are so many innocents. They all get screwed.
Jon leaned his legs out ahead of him and pretended to stretch, rejoiced in the fact that Chalice could not possibly know (and wouldn’t, in any case, like) the speech in Pimpernel Smith where the quiet and mild and clever and overlooked professor of archaeology politely lectures the Nazi holding a gun on him.
Smith predicts that what is wrong must plod onwards, grind down its own wrong road until it has destroyed almost everything and can only continue destroying, can only destroy itself.
And I actually — fuck — do believe that.
He inhaled like a man who wanted to do business.
I am a creature of long memory and immoderate belief.
He wanted, actually, to shout out, ‘Captain of Murderers’ in Leslie Howard’s 1940s English accent — one of the many you no longer hear, one filled with an English way of thinking which has also been extinguished.
Captain of Murderers …
That’s one, or both of us …
‘This Milner thing …’ Jon felt his head twitch, which was unfortunate, because it indicated stress — but it wasn’t so fatal a tell now they were friendly, well accommodated, ‘I really can’t help you that much with him, Harry. I don’t know the man and I don’t see … I may be mistaken … what purpose my getting to know him might serve. He seems very much a spent force. In other times, he could have regrouped and been a problem, but these aren’t other times. He’s a dinosaur.’
Chalice licked his lips. ‘Takes one to know one … No offence.’ And he strolled to look out of the window at the broad and high and dark and evening stillness of Pall Mall. ‘Milner’s not quite the problem, not exactly. The leaks are the problem. There are too many. And they’re too targeted. They are strategic. Some shifty little shit is kicking up dust, stamping his feet.’
From you, that’s a compliment — you shifty little shit. The boys — and girls — from the Darknet, the shadowy 4chan types, they called me a Moralfag.
Jon speaking as his thoughts gallop past him, ‘And Milner’s the contact for that?’
Moralfag’s a compliment, too.
‘He doesn’t seem quite up to it …’
‘Milner’s had none of them, but he’s running with them once they’re out. He seems to be actively avoiding any close connection, which seems slightly … odd. And he’s digging — we heard him spooning out his little tunnels, late at night — test shafts … And as he’s the loose cannon, as he’s got the big mouth, we feel he’d be the best line to pursue back to the source. He’s a horny old hack, a pre-Wapping drama queen — loves big reveals and purple prose.’
‘And you really think he’s holding something, knows sources? That he would tell me?’ This being a legitimate question, asked in a legitimate tone.
Chalice avoided making an answer, ‘We’d like to know if he’s holding something — other than his sweaty, alky dick, that is. We’d like you to check his hairy palms, Jon … Have a regular look at him. Just lately he’s walking around like a man with a platinum knob — as if he is finding himself more than averagely precious. He broke a little something today — but not much, not quite what he seems to think he’s holding.’