‘The training is tough, am I right?’ said the chauffeur.
Peter sensed he was expected to tell stories of military-style exercise regimens, Olympic tests of endurance. He had no such tales to tell. ‘There’s a physical,’ he conceded. ‘But most of the screening is… questions.’
‘Yeah?’ said the driver. A few moments later, he switched on the car radio. ‘… continues in Pakistan,’ an earnest voice began, ‘as anti-government forces… ’ The chauffeur switched to a music station, and the vintage sounds of A Flock of Seagulls warbled out.
Peter leaned back and recalled some of the questions in his screening interviews. These sessions, held in a boardroom on the tenth floor of a swanky London hotel, had gone on for hours at a time. One American woman was a constant presence: an elegant, tiny anorexic, who carried herself like a famous choreographer or retired ballet dancer. Bright-eyed and nasal-voiced, she nursed glass mugs of decaffeinated coffee as she worked, aided by a changeable team of other interrogators. Interrogators was the wrong word, perhaps, since everyone was friendly and there was an odd sense that they were rooting for him to succeed.
‘How long can you go without your favourite ice-cream?’
‘I don’t have a favourite ice-cream.’
‘What smell reminds you most of your childhood?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe custard.’
‘Do you like custard?’
‘It’s OK. These days I mainly have it on Christmas pudding.’
‘What do you think of when you think of Christmas?’
‘Christ’s Mass, a celebration of Jesus’s birth, held at the time of the Roman winter solstice. John Chrysostom. Syncretism. Santa Claus. Snow.’
‘Do you celebrate it yourself?’
‘We make a big deal of it in our church. We organise presents for disadvantaged children, put on Christmas dinner at our drop-in centre… A lot of people feel horribly lost and depressed at that time of year. You have to try to get them though it.’
‘How well do you sleep in beds that aren’t your own?’
He’d had to think about that one. Cast his mind back to the cheap hotels he and Bea had stayed in when they’d participated in evangelist rallies in other cities. The friends’ sofas that converted into mattresses of a kind. Or, further back still in his life, the tough choice between keeping your coat on so you’d shiver less, or using it as a pillow to soften the concrete against your skull. ‘I’m probably… average,’ he said. ‘As long as it’s a bed and I’m horizontal, I think I’m fine.’
‘Are you irritable before your first coffee of the day?’
‘I don’t drink coffee.’
‘Tea?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Sometimes you’re irritable?’
‘I don’t get annoyed easily.’ This was true, and these interrogations provided additional proof. He enjoyed the sparring, felt he was being tested rather than judged. The rapid-fire questions were an invigorating change from church services where he was expected to orate for an hour while others sat silent. He wanted the job, wanted it badly, but the outcome was in God’s hands, and there was nothing to be gained by getting anxious, giving dishonest answers or straining to please. He would be himself, and hope that that was enough.
‘How would you feel about wearing sandals?’
‘Why, will I have to?’
‘You might.’ This from a man whose feet were sheathed in expensive black leather shoes so shiny that Peter’s face was reflected in them.
‘How do you feel if you haven’t accessed social media for a day?’
‘I don’t access social media. At least I don’t think so. What do you mean exactly by “social media”?’
‘It’s OK.’ Whenever a question got tangled, they tended to change tack. ‘Which politician do you hate most?’
‘I don’t hate anyone. And I don’t really follow politics.’
‘It’s nine o’clock at night and the power fails. What do you do?’
‘Fix it, if I can.’
‘But how would you spend the time if you couldn’t?’
‘Talk to my wife, if she was at home at the time.’
‘How do you think she’ll cope if you’re away from home for a while?’
‘She’s a very independent and capable woman.’
‘Would you say you’re an independent and capable man?’
‘I hope so.’
‘When did you last get drunk?’
‘About seven, eight years ago.’
‘Do you feel like a drink now?’
‘I wouldn’t mind some more of this peach juice.’
‘With ice?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Imagine this,’ the woman said. ‘You visit a foreign city and your hosts invite you out for dinner. The restaurant they take you to is pleasant and lively. There’s a large transparent enclosure of cute white ducklings running around behind their mother. Every few minutes, a chef grabs one of the ducklings and tosses it into a vat of boiling oil. When it’s fried, it gets served up to the diners and everyone is happy and relaxed. Your hosts order duckling and say you should try it, it’s fantastic. What do you do?’
‘Is there anything else on the menu?’
‘Sure, lots of things.’
‘Then I’d order something else.’
‘You could still sit there and eat?’
‘It would depend on what I was doing in these people’s company in the first place.’
‘What if you disapproved of them?’
‘I’d try to steer the conversation towards the things I disapproved of, and then I’d be honest about what I thought was wrong.’
‘You don’t have a problem specifically with the duckling thing?’
‘Humans eat all sorts of animals. They slaughter pigs, who are much more intelligent than birds.’
‘So if an animal is dumb it’s OK to kill it?’
‘I’m not a butcher. Or a chef. I’ve chosen to do something else with my life. That’s a choice against killing, if you like.’
‘But what about the ducklings?’
‘What about the ducklings?’
‘You wouldn’t feel compelled to save them? For example, would you consider smashing the glass enclosure, so they could escape?’
‘Instinctively, I might. But it probably wouldn’t do those ducklings any good. If I was really haunted by what I saw in that restaurant, I suppose I could devote my whole life to re-educating the people in that society so they would kill the ducks more humanely. But I would rather devote my life to something that might persuade human beings to treat each other more humanely. Because human beings suffer so much more than ducks.’
‘You might not think so if you were a duck.’
‘I don’t think I would think much about anything if I were a duck. It’s higher consciousness that causes all our griefs and tortures, don’t you think?’
‘Would you step on a cricket?’ interjected one of the other questioners.
‘No.’
‘A cockroach?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You’re not a Buddhist, then.’
‘I never claimed to be a Buddhist.’
‘You wouldn’t say that all life is sacred?’
‘It’s a beautiful concept, but every time I wash, I kill microscopic creatures that were hoping to live on me.’
‘So where’s the dividing line for you?’ the woman rejoined. ‘Dogs? Horses? What if the restaurant was frying live kittens?’
‘Let me ask you a question,’ he said. ‘Are you sending me to a place where people are doing terrible, cruel things to other creatures?’
‘Of course not.’