Authors: Charles Cumming
“I think you’re right.”
I have a longing for a cigarette.
“Still,” she says, “I gotta say that you don’t seem that way to us.”
“Who’s us?”
“Fort and I.”
“Don’t seem vain?”
“No.”
It’s good that they think that.
“But are you disappointed to hear me say these things?”
She jumps at this: “No! Hell no. Talk, Alec, it’s fine. We’re friends. This is how it’s supposed to be.”
“I’m just telling you what I feel.”
“Yes.”
“Like for a long time now I’ve thought that things are down to luck. Success has nothing to do with talent, don’t you think? It’s just good fortune. Some people are lucky, some aren’t. It’s that simple.”
Katharine tucks her feet under her thighs, curling up tight on the sofa, and she breathes out through a narrow channel formed between pursed lips. I can feel the wine now, the dissembling brew of vodka and whiskey.
“For example, I was predicted straight-A grades for university, but I got sick and took a string of Bs and Cs, so I didn’t get my chance to go to Oxbridge. That would have changed everything. Oxford and Cambridge are the only truly optimistic places in England. Graduates come out feeling that they can do anything, that they can be anybody, because that’s the environment they’ve been educated in. And what’s to stop them? It’s almost American in that sense. But I meet Oxbridge graduates, and there’s not one of them who has something I don’t, some quality I don’t possess. And yet somehow they’ve found themselves in positions of influence or of great wealth, they’ve got ahead. Now what is that about if it isn’t just luck? I mean, what do they have that I haven’t? Am I lazy? I don’t think so. I didn’t sit on my arse at university screwing girls and smoking grass and raving it up. I just didn’t get a break. And I’m not the sort of person who gets depressed. If I start feeling low, I tell myself it’s just irrational, a chemical imbalance, and I pull myself out of it. I feel as if I have had such bad luck, you know?”
Katharine brings her eyes down from the ceiling and exclaims, “But you’re doing such good work now, such important work. The Caspian is potentially one of the most vibrant economic and political areas in the world. You’re playing a part in that. I had no idea you harbored these frustrations, Alec.”
I shouldn’t go too far with this.
“They’re not constant. I don’t feel like that all the time. And you’re right—the Caspian is exciting. But look at how I’m treated, Kathy. Twelve and a half thousand pounds a year and no future to bank on. There’s so little respect for low-level employees at Abnex, it’s staggering. I can’t believe what a shitty company it is.”
“How are they shitty?” This has caught her interest. “Tell me,” she says.
“Well…”
“Yes?”
“I’ve only just started admitting this to myself, but after what happened with MI6, Abnex was a bit of a rebound.”
“MI6?” she says, as if she’s never heard of it. “Oh yes, of course. Your interviews. How do you mean a rebound?”
“Well, that was my dream job. To do that.”
“Yes,” she says slowly. “I recall you saying.”
I watch her face for a trace of deceit, but there is nothing.
“Not for Queen and Country—that’s all shit—but to be involved in something where success or failure depended entirely on me and me alone. Working in oil is okay, but it doesn’t compare to what I would have experienced if I’d been involved in intelligence work. And I’m not sure that I’m cut out for the corporate life.”
“Why’s that?”
“Let me put it like this. Sometimes I wake up and I think: is this it? Is this what I really want to do with my life? Is this the sum total of my efforts so far? I so much wanted to be a success at something. To be significant. And I still resent the Foreign Office for denying me that. It’s childish, but that’s how I feel.”
“But you
are
a success, Alec,” she says, and it sounds as if she really means it.
“No, I mean a successful individual. I wanted to make my own mark on the world. MI6 would have given me that. Is that too idealistic?”
“No,” she says quietly, nodding her head in slow agreement. “It’s not too idealistic. You know, it’s funny. I look at you, and I think you have everything a guy your age could possibly want.”
“It’s not enough.”
“Why not?”
“I want acclaim. I want to be
acknowledged.
”
“That’s understandable. A lot of young, ambitious guys are just like you. But do you mind if I give you a piece of advice?”
“Go ahead.”
After a brief pause, she says, “I think you should relax a little bit, try to enjoy being young. What do you say?”
Katharine edges toward me, lending a bending emphasis to the question. For the first time since she returned from the kitchen, we find ourselves looking each other directly in the eye. We hold the contact, drawing out a candid silence, and I tell myself: this is happening again. She is giving it another try. She is guiding us gradually toward the bliss of an infidelity. And I think of Fortner, asleep in Kiev, and feel no loyalty to him whatsoever.
“Relax a little bit?” I repeat, moving toward her.
“Yes.”
“And how do you suggest I do that?”
“I dunno,” she says, leaning back. “Get out a bit more. Try not to care so much about what other people think about you.”
In this split instant, I fear that I have read the situation wrongly. Her manner becomes suddenly curt, even distant, as if by flirting with her I have broken the spell between us, made it explicit.
“Easier said than done.”
“Why?” she asks. “Why is that easier said than done?”
“I find it so hard, Kathy. To relax.”
“Oh, come on,” she says, tossing her face up to the ceiling. She finds my cautiousness disappointing.
“You’re right….”
“You know I am. I know what’s best for you. What about Saul? Why don’t you go out with him more?”
“With Saul? He’s always busy. Always got a new girlfriend on the go.”
“Yes,” she says quietly, standing and picking up the two empty glasses from the table.
“Let me give you a hand with those.”
“No no, that’s okay.” As she moves toward the kitchen she is shaking her head. “You’re so serious, Alec. So serious. Always have been.”
I don’t reply. It is as if she is angry with me.
“You want another drink?” she calls out.
“No, thanks. I’ve had one too many.”
“Me too,” she says, coming back in. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Fine.”
“Be here when I get back?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I had expected it. When she returns from the bathroom, Katharine is yawning, the elegant sinew and muscle on her neck stretched out in fine strands. She slumps down on the sofa and says, “Excuse me. Oh, I’m sorry. Must be tired.”
I take the cue. The hint is broad enough.
“I should be going, Kathy. It’s late.”
“No, don’t,” she says, jerking up out of her seat with a suddenness that gives me new hope. “It’s so nice having you here. I’m just a little sleepy, that’s all.”
She rests her hand lightly on my leg. Why is she blowing so hot and cold?
“That’s why I should be going. If you’re sleepy.”
“Why don’t you stay the night? It’s Sunday tomorrow.”
“No. You’ll want to be on your own.”
“Not at all. I hate being alone. Strange noises. It would be nice if you slept over.”
“You sure?”
“Sure, I’m sure.”
“Because that would be great if I could. I’d save the money on a taxi.”
“Well there you go, then. It’s settled.” She beams, lots of teeth. “It’ll be just me and you. You can look out for me. Be my protector.”
“Well, if I’m going to do that, I should sleep on the sofa. See the burglars coming in.”
“You won’t be all that comfortable.”
“Well, where do you suggest I sleep?”
I put as much ambiguity into this as is comfortable to risk, but Katharine doesn’t pick it up.
“Well, there’s always Fortner’s room,” she says. “I can change the sheets.”
Not what I wanted her to say.
“That’s a chore. You don’t want to be doing that at this time of night.”
“No really. It’s no problem.”
I scratch my temple.
“Look, maybe I should just get a taxi. Maybe you’d prefer it if I went.”
“No. Stay. I’ll fetch you a blanket.”
“You have one spare?”
“Yeah. I got plenty.”
She twists up from the sofa, her left sock hanging loose off the toes, and walks back down the corridor.
“There you go,” she says, returning with a green checkered rug draped over her arm. She lays it on the sofa beside me. “Need a pillow?”
She yawns again.
“No, the cushions will be fine.”
“Okay, then. Well, I’m gonna get some sleep. Shout if you need anything.”
“I will.”
And she leaves the room.
I am not sure that there was anything else I could have done. For a moment, sex was hovering in the background like a secret promise, but it was too much of a risk to make a move. I could not have been certain of her response. But now I am alone, still clothed, still wide awake, feeling cramped and uncomfortable on a Habitat sofa. I regret talking her into letting me stay the night. I only did it in the hope of being asked to join her in bed. I’d like to be on my way home, working back through the night’s conversations, thinking them through and noting them down. Now I am stuck here for what will be at least six or seven hours.
At around two o’clock, perhaps a little later, I hear the noise of footsteps in the corridor. A quiet tiptoe in the dark. I turn on the sofa to face out into the darkened room, eyes squinting as a light comes on in the passage.
I make out Katharine’s silhouette in the doorway. She pauses there, and the room is so quiet that I can hear her breathing. She is coming toward me, edging forward.
“Kathy?”
“Sorry.” She is whispering, as if someone might hear. “Did I wake you?”
“No. I can’t sleep.”
“I was just gonna get a glass of water,” she says. “Sorry to wake you. You want one?”
“No, thanks.”
If I’d said yes, it would have brought her over here. That was stupid.
“Actually, maybe I will have one.”
“Okay.”
She turns on a side light in the kitchen and the low hum of the fridge compressor cuts out as she opens the door. A narrow path of bright light floods the floor. She pours two glasses of water, closes the fridge, and comes back into the sitting room.
“There you go,” she says. I sit up, trying to catch her eye as she comes toward me. Her legs look tanned in the darkness.
“Thanks, Kathy.”
“Sorry to disturb you.”
She is not stopping. She turns, saying nothing more, moving back in the direction of her room.
“Can’t you sleep?” I ask, desperate now to keep her here. My voice is loud in the room, foolish.
“No,” she whispers. “I’ll be fine after this. Move into Fortner’s bed if you want. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“So how was Kiev?”
“Kiev?” says Fortner, as if he has never heard of the place.
“Yeah. Kiev.”
We walk another two or three paces down Ladbroke Grove before he replies, “Oh, yeah. Christ. Kiev. Not bad. Not bad.”
I know he didn’t go to Ukraine. The Hobbit told me yesterday on the phone.
“Were you working the whole time?”
“Flat out. Twenty-four/seven. A lotta talk.”
“Nice weather?” I ask, with a grin that he doesn’t see.
“Oh, yeah. Real nice. They sure don’t know how to dress for it, though. Girls wearing nylon tights in the sunshine, and all the guys with these thick mustaches. What is that, a macho thing?”
“What, wearing nylon tights?”
“You’re sharp tonight, Milius,” he says, putting his arm across my shoulders. He does that quite frequently nowadays. “I like it when you’re quick on your feet. Keeps us old guys on our toes.”
Fortner and I are going for a drink together. It’s something we’ve done three times before, just the two of us. Katharine cooks dinner, makes herself scarce, and leaves us to it.
You go enjoy yourself, honey,
she says, helping him on with his jacket.
Bring him back in one piece, y’hear?
And we walk the few blocks from their flat in Colville Gardens down to Ladbroke Grove, ready to drink through to last orders.
The setting is a spacious, brown, old-style pub that will be a themed bar and restaurant within twelve months, guaranteed. I hold the door open for him and we go inside, finding a pair of stools at the bar. Fortner hangs his elbow-patched tweed jacket on a nearby hook, retrieving his wallet from the inside pocket. Then he sits beside me and rests his forearms on the wooden bar, breathing out heavily in anticipation of the long night ahead. To his left there’s a vast,
Sun
-reading builder, all biceps and sinew, muscles packed tight into a lumberjack shirt. His neck has been shaved to stubble and dropping from a scarred right earlobe is a single silver stud that seems to contain his entire personality. The man does not look up as we sit down. He just keeps on reading his paper.
“I’ll get the first round,” I say and reach into my hip pocket for a handful of change. “You want a pint or something, Fortner?”
“A pint,” he says slowly, as if, after four years in London, he is still coming to terms with this strange Limey word. “Yes. That is a good idea, young man. A pint.”
“Guinness? I’m having one.”
The barman hears this and brings down two tall glasses, starting to pour the Guinness before I have even asked for them. He allows the pints to settle for a while, using the time to take my money and cash it in at the till.
“Nuts? Do you want any nuts?”
“Not for me,” Fortner says. “Been tryin’ to get back to my ideal weight. Two hundred fifty pounds.”
“There you go, guys,” says the barman, setting the glasses down in front of us. He has the slightly sweeter, higher semitone voice that distinguishes Kiwis from Australians.
“How was your flight?”
“From Ukraine? Lousy.”
Imperceptibly, Fortner gathers together the lies.
“There’s no chance of jet lag on account of the time difference, but they do their best to exhaust you anyway. Airplane sat on the tarmac for three straight hours. Fuckin’ stewards gave us one complimentary drink and then played cards until takeoff. Then the flight was diverted through Munich and I had to spend the night in a goddamn Holiday Inn. Took a day to get home.”
This is utterly convincing. Perhaps the Hobbit got it wrong. Fortner does look older tonight, aged by long-haul flights and the trickeries of Kiev. Here is a man propping up a bar, a man in shirtsleeves and slacks, with ovals of sweat under his arms and stubble cast across his face like a rash. There will be questions he means to ask me, but his eyes look drained of will. He has no energy.
“You look tired,” I tell him.
“Oh, I’m all right. This’ll start me up.”
He takes a long creamy swig of his Guinness and sets it back down on the bar with a thud.
“So what’d you and Kathy get up to while I was away?” he asks, licking his upper lip. We’ve already been over this at dinner, but it makes me do the talking.
“Like she told you at supper. We went walking in Battersea Park. Had dinner at your place afterward.”
“Oh, yeah. She mentioned that.”
“Why d’you ask, then?”
“I just wanted details. Kinda missed her while I was away. I like hearing stories about her, things she did and said.”
The truth here would prove interesting.
Well, frankly, Fort, there’s a lot of sexual tension between your wife and me and we nearly had sex on Saturday night.
“She talked about you a lot,” I tell him.
“Is that right?”
“Then I talked about me a lot.”
“No change there, then.”
“And finally we went to bed. I slept on the sofa.”
“You stayed the night on the couch? Kathy never said.”
Interesting.
“Didn’t she?”
“No.”
An awkward pause hovers over us. The builder turns the page of his newspaper and it crackles in the silence.
“Why do we always drink here?” I ask Fortner, turning back to face him and lighting a cigarette from my pack on the counter. “Why do you like it?”
“Don’t you?”
“No, it’s great. It’s just that we haven’t varied the venue.”
“Consistency is a much undervalued asset in modern times, my friend. Best to get to know a place. And besides, there’s good-lookin’ women later on.”
The builder vibrates slightly on his stool. Something about this unnerves him.
Fortner takes another long draw of Guinness. “So how are things?” he asks. “Everything okay at Abnex?”
“Good, actually. Alan’s on holiday this week so we can get things done without him breathing down our necks.”
“That’s always good, when the big chief takes off. You gotta hope they never come back.”
“But I’m broke. I got hit for a parking ticket and a tax bill first thing on Monday morning. That really pissed me off.”
“You forget to feed the meter?”
“No. Parked it on a double yellow near Hammersmith. Got towed.”
“Shit. They swoop those guys, like a fucking SWAT team. You gotta be careful.”
“The tax is worse. I live in a shithole but I’m paying a fortune to the local council.”
“You let it pile up?”
“Yeah, it’s been building for the last year. I couldn’t afford to pay so I just let it drift.”
“Foolish, my friend. Foolish. You should have come to me. I’d have helped you out.”
Fortner gives me a paternal pat on the back and I thank him, saying in the nicest possible way that I have no intention of borrowing money off him. Then he drains his pint with a long, satisfied gulp and says it’s his round. Mine is still only half empty. It takes him some time to get the attention of the barmaid, a local girl who has served us before.
“How are you, gents?” she asks. She has a crisp East End accent. “Same again, is it?”
“That’s right,” says Fortner, taking a twenty-pound note from his wallet and snapping it between his fingers. He’s started to pick up in the last few minutes. One more drink and things will be rolling.
“You mind if I make a slight criticism of you, Milius?” he says, still looking at the girl. “Would that be okay?”
It is as if the fact that he is buying me a drink has suddenly given him the confidence to ask a serious question.
“Sure.”
“It’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about for a while now and I thought tonight would give us a good opportunity.”
“Go ahead.”
“It’s just that in the time that we’ve known each other—what is it, about six or seven months—you’ve shown a lot of hostility to the way things work over here. Does that sound unfair? I mean, stop me if I’m outta line.”
He wants to sound me out.
“No, that’s okay.”
“So you know what I’m talkin’ about?”
“Yes. Of course.”
Encouraged by this, Fortner expands on his theme.
“There’s just certain things you say, certain observations you make. For a guy your age you have a very jaded perspective on things. Maybe it’s normal for your generation. I hope you don’t mind me sayin’ this.”
I don’t mind at all. The barmaid puts two more pints down in front of us and gives Fortner his change.
“Example. Do you really think that the concept of Queen and Country is just a lot of shit?”
“Why did you use that phrase? Queen and Country?”
“Because you did. With Kathy on Saturday night. She told me you’d said you didn’t want to go into the Foreign Service for patriotic reasons because you thought that kind of stuff was a waste of time. Why d’you feel that way?”
“Maybe it’s difficult for an American to understand,” I say, trying to find a way of balancing expediency with opinions that I genuinely hold. “Although your country is divided in a lot of ways—down racial lines, in the gap between the very rich and the very poor—you’re still bound together by flag-waving patriotism. It’s drummed into you from childhood. God bless America and put a star-spangled banner outside every home. You’re taught to love your country. We don’t have that here. We don’t do things the same way. Loving the country is something blue-rinse Tories do at the party conference in Blackpool. It’s seen as naïve, lacking the requisite degree of cynicism. We’re a divided nation, like yours, but we seem to relish that divisiveness. We have no reason historically to love our country.”
“That’s a crock. Look at the camaraderie you generated during World War Two.”
“Right. And we’ve been living off that for fifty years. Let me tell you something. Four in ten people in England celebrate St. Patrick’s Day every year. How many do you think do something to celebrate St. George’s Day?”
“No idea.”
“Four in every hundred. English pubs can get a special late license to serve on St. Patrick’s Day. They can’t if they want to do that on St. George’s.”
“That’s pretty sad.”
“Too right it’s pretty sad. It’s pretty fucking embarrassing, too. But that isn’t the reason why I’m jaded, necessarily.”
“Why, then?”
The builder suddenly scrapes back his stool, bundles up his copy of
The Sun,
and leaves. He’s heard enough of this.
“I think we’re living in an age of social disintegration,” I tell Fortner, trying not to sound too apocalyptic.
“You do?” He looks nonplussed, as if everyone he has had a conversation with in the last few days has said exactly the same thing.
“Absolutely. Health and education in this country, the two bedrocks of any civilized society, are a disgrace.”
I almost used the word time bomb there, but I can hear Hawkes’s voice in my head: You’re not trying to
defect,
Alec. Then his brisk, cackled laugh.
I continue, “For nearly twenty years the government has been more interested in installing pen-pushing bureaucrats into hospitals than it has been in making sure there are enough beds to tend for the sick. And why? Because in these days of enlightened capitalism and free markets, a hospital, just like everything else, has to turn a profit.”
“Come on, Milius. You believe in free markets just as much as the next guy.”
True. But I don’t admit this.
“Just a second. So in order to make their money, they’ve created a culture of fear overseen by big-brother management consultants—no offense to you and Kathy—whose only concern is to get their annual bonus. The last thing it has anything to do with is curing people.”
Fortner makes to interrupt me again, but I keep on going.
“Education is worse. Nobody wants to become a teacher anymore, because in the mind of the public, being a teacher is just a notch above cleaning toilets for a living. Just like doctors, they’ve been treated with utter contempt, subjected to endless form-filling, changes in the curriculum, low salaries, you name it. And all because the Tories don’t have the guts to say that the real problem isn’t the teachers, it’s bad parenting. And you know why they don’t say that? Because parents vote.”
“You think that’ll change if Labour wins?”
I give a spluttering laugh, more contemptuous than I had intended.
“No. No way. Maybe they’ll try and make the difference in schools, but until the accumulation of knowledge stops being unfashionable, until kids are encouraged to stay at school past sixteen, and until they find parents who actually take responsibility for their kids when they go home in the evening, nothing will change. Nothing.”
“It’s no different in the States,” Fortner says, curling his mouth downward and shaking his head. “In some cities we have kids checking in assault rifles before assembly. You go to a high school in Watts, it’s like passing through security at Tel Aviv airport.”
“Sure. But your system isn’t a toss-up between private and public education. Only a very few people actually pay to go to high school in the States, right?”
“Right.”
“That’s not the case in this country. Here, you can buy your way out of the mess. And the worst of it is that the more state education goes into decline, the more parents are going to send their children to fee-paying schools, and the more teachers are going to want jobs outside the state sector because they don’t need the grief of working in an inner-city comprehensive. So the gap between rich and poor will widen. It’s exactly the same pattern with medical care. The only way not to have to wait three years for an operation is to pay for it. But you want to know what really sickens me?”
“I feel sure you’re gonna tell me.”
“Our fee-paying schools. They have unbelievable facilities, superb teaching resources, and they cost a fortune. But they’re wasted on the people who can afford to go there.”
“Why d’you say that?”
“Look at what the students do after ten years of being privately educated. Most of them go and work in the City with the sole objective of making money. Nobody ever puts anything back in. Nobody is taught to feel a responsibility toward their society. It’s women and children first with those guys, but only if Tarquin isn’t worried about losing the twelve percent bonus on his offshore-investment portfolio. That’s the extent of his imagination.”