Jon continued: ‘To take an example — Harcourt’s example — if you’re a visitor to Downing Street you roll through security, they check you for secret hand grenades and so forth and then you trot up the iconic steps and in through the iconic door and you leave your phone in this nifty little rack provided for the purpose: sort of faux mahogany, it’s the kind of thing you’d buy from a catalogue, or a smug ad at the back of a Sunday-newspaper magazine — thin shelves to fit your mobile and keep it while you head off without it. And anybody reasonable can see why a modern mobile phone would be unfit for the inner sanctum — guests couldn’t be allowed to wander the hallowed precincts taking photos, or tweeting indiscreetly. It’s partly a security issue and partly a matter of taste. Our masters can take selfies with each other at notable funerals, high-profile events, but the rest of us might lack discretion. We might put mocking snaps of their toilet or their canapés on to Facebook. We might record chats that were meant to be just cosy. Which is to say, deniable.’
Jon grabbed another mouthful of tea and felt it — he could swear — beginning to destroy his teeth. Why not add his incisors to the rest of the catastrophe, why not …? ‘Once your phone has been abandoned then you’re in for quite a walk — the building is oddly designed, it has to hide a family apartment and close the baize-backed door between the public and the working surfaces, very Downton Abbey. It’s an old and complicated place. You’ll find a hallway gives into a hallway and then you’ll climb those wonderful stairs — photos of the previous incumbents lining its rise, a thrum of undiluted narcissism — and up you go to this or that reception room … the slight scruffiness, the tall windows with a view over the garden, over the great big blank of Horse Guards Parade, over the grey bones of St James’s …
‘That’s just how it is.’
‘And your phone is far away back by the entrance where you can’t protect it. You’re up above, avoiding the average catering and whatever art they’re displaying to impress, or having your official picture taken shaking hands with whoever — touching your skin to theirs in this weird exchange of mutual humanity when maybe there’s nothing like that available at the time. And maybe you’re thinking they look peculiar, the top-flight men. You’ve seen them, Milner: the camera-ready, smoothed-over tribe of mannequin-faced nonentities … They look bizarre. They’re the ones who succeed, who mountaineer right the way up to the top, but they just have become bizarre. Nonetheless you’re slipping in your wise little word, stating your case and feeling quite close to the heart of things, you’re getting eye contact and being reassured that someone’s listening — you’re learning that someone you possibly thought an opponent is maybe doing their best and giving you artisanal cheese straws, or whatever the occasion may allow … But your phone is still downstairs and lonely.
‘And that’s why kind Mr Harcourt takes it away and he speaks to it gently and kindly — grooms it — and then he opens it up — not so that it’ll show — and he climbs inside it and leaves what he must, leaves you with clever presents you don’t know about.
‘Even if you rush downstairs sharpish, are unexpectedly on hand because you’ve changed your mind about breathing the same air as whoever’s up aloft — even if you leg it back out, having urgently remembered you left the gas on … Well, you’ll be too slow to catch him … You have to go all that long way back in this mazey old house … And you’ll perhaps need to pick up your coat, put it on, field a polite enquiry from this or that member of staff — they like to be helpful and pleasant at Number 10, they’re servants, but not servile, not a bit of it. No matter how fast you come downstairs, Mr Harcourt will have the friend from your pocket back in place and ready for you and shipshape when you reach for it. It will seem the same, but it will now inform upon you in rather more ways than it did already. It will see and overhear and tattletale about your family, your affairs, your travel, co-workers, plans, meetings, flirtations, loves. You’re fucked.’
Milner was no longer drinking. ‘Fuck.’
‘Yeah. As I said.’
‘Fuck me sideways. That can’t be true, though.’
Which gave Jon a scything headache. ‘I’m telling you it can. I’m telling you because your colleagues who spend their afternoons dozing in the Commons Library, the ones who no longer swap treats for access, because they don’t want access — the ones who are as much a part of Parliament as the Pugin wallpaper — those people who call themselves journalists missed this. And I don’t think they’d really want it. It would be tasty but it would scare them. You’re outside — I needed somebody outside.’
‘Yeah, because you’re so far above any journalist, aren’t you, Jon? Nobody’s lower than us. And you, you don’t have opinions, you civil-service fucks, you float above it all like fucking farts — worse than fucking lawyers. You won’t rock the boat but if you did … my how clean your hands would be. You help your little masters screw over strangers and you let everybody know that you’d do it so much better if you had your way — only you’re too pure to be in nasty, dirty politics … You’re the dirtiest there is.’
Jon just nodded and held his tongue.
Yes, fine, agreed — I don’t care. Just take the hook and swallow it, will you?
And Milner did have the proper feral gleam about him that Jon had hoped for.
I can brief. I can brief better than Chalice. I can raise an appetite. I can inform and provoke forward motion … And this time it’s for me, for my ministry. This time I am doing something that’s for me.
‘Targeted?’ Milner’s voice pressed down to a whisper and he pretended to lean on Jon’s shoulder for support. ‘Targeted grooming, or dragnet … No, there wouldn’t be time for dragnet …’
We must look like a very mismatched couple.
Or like two sad bastards clinging together for warmth, for their last chance.
‘You should ask him. But not dragnet, no. And it saves bumping people, break-ins, picking their pockets in the street — all that risk.’
‘Just Downing Street?’ Milner close enough to tickle breath straight into Jon’s ear like a teenager on a date.
‘Think of all the government buildings that ask you to leave your phone when you step inside. Think of all the boisterous opposition, the NGO reps and agitators, the politically involved, the uppity celebs, the potential rivals. Once they’ve been invited for drinks and nibbles, you’ve got their privacy, not just texts and emails and calls — their whole privacy — forever. Or at least until they ditch their phone. I don’t exactly know who listens. I think knowing who listens would be unhealthy.’
‘So I’m meant to get unhealthy for you.’
‘There are so many people who already want to kill you, it will make no odds.’
I don’t believe that, not anything like that. It would always make odds. Any damage is to be avoided. And I would like to conduct myself in a manner which conforms to that ideal.
‘I don’t believe you.’ But Milner’s grip on Jon’s hand feels already fond and committed. It indicates a hearty boy’s excitement at the prospect of a rough and tumble game — a good kicking.
‘I don’t care, Milner.’ I can kick a bit myself when necessary. ‘Ask Harcourt — he’ll convince you or not. It’s none of my business. He knows he’ll be hung out to dry — so many skeletons falling out of so many cupboards — and he needs a friend. He feels the end is nigh. And if I could find him, someone else could, too.’
‘Fuck.’
‘He’s sleeping — I think — in his car at the moment and no longer has an address. Travel plans in place for somewhere I am assured is not Costa Rica …’