Philip Hensher - Tales of Persuasion

‘You see?’ Andrea said. She tapped a red-painted fingernail sharply on the back of the report she was clutching. ‘I said there was a bomb going off, didn’t I? Didn’t you hear it? I’m the only one who heard anything, but, oh, no, Andrea, you must have been hearing things. But there you are.’

‘I was at the far end of Whitehall,’ Patrick said. ‘And there was a police cordon going up, and I phoned you then from the phone box. Then I asked the policeman in charge what was happening. He wouldn’t let me through at first. I knew he wouldn’t. But then all of a sudden there was the Clerk of the House. I can’t think what he was doing at the far end of Whitehall at a quarter to ten, but he just sort of glowered at them and told them who he was, and they let him through and me as well.’

‘Well, there you are, then,’ Andrea said. ‘A mortar attack on 10 Downing Street. I do hope that nice Mr Major is quite all right.’ She stood for a moment inspecting George, her mouth slightly open, an expression of amusement in her eyes. As if with a snap of command, she turned and left, shutting what must be the door of her office with a bright slam.

‘She’s a good soul,’ Patrick said. He thrust an index finger in his ear and waggled it furiously, extracting it with a pop. ‘You’ll find that she has her own ways of dealing with things, and they all work out in the end. Just don’t try to suggest any changes, and everything will be absolutely fine. Well. Welcome! I’m not at all sure what we should be doing today. I need to make two or three phone calls, and then we can sit down and talk and I can explain things, about where the committee has got to and what you ought to be doing and so on. I won’t be too long. One thing …’

Patrick came into the office, and noiselessly pushed the door to. ‘If I could recommend something – if I were you, I would always find that I had something important to do at the close of business on a Friday. Andrea’s a very good soul, but it’s as well not to be drawn into her Friday afternoons and evenings. Just a word to the wise.’

‘What are you saying?’ Andrea’s voice shouted from her office.

‘Nothing! Nothing at all, my sweet!’ Patrick called. ‘I was just welcoming George to the office. It occurs to me –’ his voice dropped to normal volume ‘– that the one thing that is supposed to happen this morning is John Slaughter, the bod from UCL, he was supposed to come in and brief us. About wave energy. I don’t know anything about wave energy and I don’t suppose you do either. He was meant to come in at eleven thirty but I don’t know if that’s going to happen. If you wanted, you could try to find out whether they’re letting anyone through. He hasn’t phoned, as far as I know. Andrea,’ he called again. ‘Has John Slaughter called? Well, no, then.’

Patrick left. George knew that the time had come to demonstrate initiative and efficiency. He picked up the biro, and wrote ‘John Slaughter?’ in the spiral-bound notebook. He thought the best way to discover the state of affairs was to go downstairs and ask the security staff. He left the office, leaving the door open, and walked to the stairs. At the bottom, the woman security officer was at the desk on her own. He noticed she had a large hairy mole on her left cheek. He wondered if the time would come when he knew her name, and could recognize her. There was no need to ask her anything. Her voice called out behind him: ‘There’s been a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street. Everything’s sealed off.’ He nodded at her, and left the building, checking that he still had his pass in his pocket. The side-street outside was deserted; the snow was falling heavily, and had now settled. The junction with Whitehall was sealed off with police incident tape. George walked up to it. It must have been sealed off since Patrick had made it through. The whole of Whitehall, to left and right, was deserted behind incident tape. The snow fell on untouched ground, and was now a pristine three inches deep.

Once, George had been out in the country after a heavy snowfall, and had seen a woman playing a trick on her dog. A wound-up, bounding, overwhelmed dog, a Jack Russell. The woman bent down, and took a fistful of snow, rolling it into a snowball, and threw it. The dog hurtled forward to find the thrown thing to fetch, but where the snowball fell into the snow, there was only snow, and nothing to bring back. The dog ran around, astonished, baffled, and returned. The woman bent, rolled, threw again. The dog fell for it again. She had been doing it for some time. The field of snow contained something to fetch, and the dog had run into it, again and again. Now, beyond the Cenotaph, two policemen stood in their dark uniforms, like picturesque figures in a snow scene. There was no possibility that anyone would reach them until the road block was lifted. George stood there. The boulevard was transformed. Nobody else was there, looking at it. There was a perfume in the air that was the absence of perfume: London stripped of its odours and made to smell of snow falling through oxygen. Nobody else would ever see the sight of Whitehall as blank and clean and silent as a remote moor in deep winter, unpressed by the tread of foot. The sight was as unique as his first day at the work he was going to make a success of.

He was able to tell Patrick that he thought there was no possibility of receiving any visitors until the cordon was lifted, and he did not know when that might be. Patrick cursed amiably, and went away, promising that he would sit down and explain everything about the committee and its work later that morning. George sat down and reached for his in-tray. He opened the first document. It was the annual report of an organization that seemed to be something to do with nuclear energy. George began to read it. He understood almost nothing of what he read, and soon a feeling of mild satisfaction came over him at the image of dedication he must be presenting, if anyone walked past his office and happened to glance in. In time, he shut the document and placed it in the out-tray. It occurred to him to make a note of what he had read, and he did so, in the spiral-bound notebook. He picked up the second document in the pile, and soon he looked like someone who was making efficient work out of his inconveniently interrupted day. He passed papers from one pile to another, with the appearance of someone who was working hard, and beginning a new life. Anyone could see he had the capacity to be useful, and the thought gave George, head down, something rather like joy.

‘No, I don’t speak the lingo at all,’ she would say. ‘Just bono giorno, honey, bono sera, that’s all it takes. What’s the point? They rob you anyway, rob you blind. Take Paolo …’

Those Florentine afternoons. And afterwards I was always the same. Some people are always on stage. Most are destined always to be in the audience. Realizing it, you can never change the fact afterwards. After Florence, I would always be in row F of the stalls, hands clasped, looking up as the lights pointed in a different direction, allowing myself to be persuaded.

I went to Italy because of love – no, guilt. I was twenty-seven. I had been working ‘in the arts’ for five years. It was the sort of job that had sounded immensely desirable once. ‘Arts administration,’ I had confidently said to careers advisers, friends of my parents at drinks at Christmas. It had sounded good, labour rooted in passion and exchanged, at the end of the month, for money you couldn’t be ashamed of earning. My contemporaries failed, and had to settle for jobs as solicitors. Five years later, they earned three times what I did and were beginning to drop me. They could not be blamed. ‘Arts administration’ meant a narrow office in a Victorian museum in the north, kept going with public money and the promise of lottery largesse. I found, after all, that you could be ashamed of the money at the end of the month. It was so little. My grey walls teetered with box files; outside, you walked between the museum’s doubtful Raffaelino and the still more doubtful school parties. I grew to detest the single Matthew Smith, lurid as the municipal flowerbeds, to hate, too, the multiple aldermen in committees, drab and important in appearance as the museum’s solitary Stanley Spencer. Last Supper in Maidenhead . You may know it from reproductions.