‘Is he holding, though? Is he bluffing?’
Jon stared at the man’s back, felt secure in loathing the curve of his skull, the slightly low left shoulder, the undefended view of a liar.
They never look quite the thing — the liars — not unless they can give the full-frontal view. Not even very good liars can lie with the back of their head.
‘What do you think, Jon?’
‘Me?’ Jon sighed as a tired and overstretched public servant might. ‘As I’ve said. I don’t see that he’s got a light in his eye about anything. He is a show-off, as you say, and he’d at least have hinted this afternoon — he was genuinely quite drunk. He would have wanted to let me know he was sitting on at least a straight flush before the flop.’
Chalice fancies himself at poker, yearns for the days of the Clermont Club and the glamour of white-tie losses.
Jon played his own kind of bet. ‘God knows … you’d think someone would have leaked about me, that he’d have heard something of it. He’d have been bound to mention, it would make a fun story for a slow Sunday morning — senior civil servant enjoys …’
‘A harem? Hot and cold running cunt?’ Chalice turned neatly on his heel and pressed back into the room. There was no smile this time.
No. I made a bad bet. I take it back.
But I am all smooth.
But I’ve offered the wrong fucking bluff …
But I can breathe easy … visibly easy … I’m OK.
Nevertheless, Jon’s arms and legs lost their muscle tone for a horrible plunge of cold time.
Your feet go numb first with hemlock …
Meanwhile he thought softly what Chalice said aloud, ‘Ah, Jon, but if Milner did know about you — if any of them did — you’d be just the man to lean on for information …’
Jon sinking into his breath, keeping his breath, still and still and still and calm. He produced a frown, an evident instant of distaste, anger. ‘And you think that? Of me?’
This hunting pack kind of laugh, a hound’s laugh, escaped Chalice as he patted his hands together — so, so, so — and then chuckled on with, ‘We thought it a possibility. That’s why — for goodness’ sake — we made sure all the heavies already know about you and your sad little headfucks on paper and your sad little marriage. We told them it’s no kind of news and that they all have it, so why bother running it? We stopped their guns. Bedroom frolics they would have loved, a man in his forties, a credible man, that would be different …’ Chalice tilted his head to one side. ‘But no offence, Jon, but a thinning memo-shuffler who’s outlived his hopes of promotion penning damp little letters, writing down his wanks, the scraggy old lad keeping busy … All rather too disgusting. You’re not a story. You’re more a cry for help …’
Jon kept his fists — he suddenly had fists — in positions of violent stillness, cramped at the ends of his arms. He nodded neatly, like a memo-shuffler. He kept his mind in suspension, locked away from all activity and harm.
Stillness.
I will meet you.
Stillness.
I will …
Jon kept nodding, drifting his head down so that he could not see Harry Chalice, not even his feet, and so that it was possible to say, ‘I do have an appointment now, though, Harry, and I would like to keep it if you wouldn’t mind.’
A pause floated in and made the air taste slightly metallic, unwholesome.
There was the sound of a jacket being buttoned — that tiny disturbance.
I will meet you.
I’m all right.
I’m a good man.
I do my best.
‘All right, Jon. Off you trot.’
A young man, possibly a student, stands in a Circle Line subway train. The car is half empty and he could sit if he likes, but he may not be aware of this. His eyes are closed and he wears headphones which are leaching the ghosts of music into the space around him. He holds tight to an overheard rail and rocks only gently, slowly, with the motion of the floor under his feet, even though the passengers near him can hear the driving speed of the beat, that rapid and tinny insistence, which must be something almost overwhelming in his head.
Eyes turn to him, irritated, disapproving.
At St James’s Park three girls enter the carriage, brushing past him and opening his eyes.
They also choose not to sit and, instead, gather opposite him. They look at each other. They smile. They begin dancing to what they can gather of his spilling music: arms lifting, bodies swaying, answering the thin call of what he offers, perhaps in spite of himself, perhaps as a demonstration of his general thoughtlessness.
He watches them as they shuffle-walk closer, swing and bump.
They don’t meet his eye. They dance as though they had always intended to, as though they always do, as though it is only coincidental that they’re keeping his second-hand beat. They shift and spin, change places, as if they have realised they are beautiful, are human beings in their twenties and therefore effortlessly lovely, unable to do anything other than shine like this and be in the world with a perfect bloom like this and show the tranquillity of easy muscle like this. They are languidly delighted, ignoring the man in a way that means he becomes so aware of himself that he blushes and a sudden jolt of the moving car makes his feet stumble, while his arm snaps up and clings to the overhead rail and saves him, lets him hang.
The young man, possibly a student, watches the girls as if they are a miracle, a wonderful humiliation that he can’t mind, that he loves. It seems they have suspended his breathing. It seems he doesn’t mind that, either.
21:25
JON HAD REACHED South Kensington Station. He rose up from the platform with the purposeful frown of a man in a hurry. That seemed a hopeful choice. He mounted the escalator with fierce and obvious strides as the grey-toothed metal steps lifted beneath him, reeled him forwards to the exit and ground level. He was his own ministry in motion.
I progress.
When the treads subsided, meshed and flattened at the end of his climb, they offered the usual illusion of mildly gliding dominance and things sinking before his will, going his way.
Even though quite a number of things were not.
I ought call her. Again. Explain myself, everything, something.
I need explaining. That second time, in the restaurant … I was a disaster. I was unmitigated in my total fucking failure. And I’m aware that’s a criticism framed in terms unsuited to a supportive and functional workplace.
But I am not a workplace. Or supportive. Or functional. I am only a person. I am a fucked-up person.
He coped with the station’s final steps while shaking his head like a swimmer, freshly emerged.
Or maybe I’m not quite totally screwed — I’m simply not perfect at once. Even the greats, they’d have a few takes at each song. The version you finally hear, it’s had work. And I need time to work. I don’t improvise. I can’t get away with rough and ready. I will not ever be a feasible live show. I’ll always be the hideous semi-pensioner, thrashing about with his fork like some care-home resident, suddenly baffled by pasta in an empty restaurant.