A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

Tell me what to create and I’ll make sure somebody creates it. Or at least investigates its creation.

Promise, cross my heart. Just let me loose and I will do it — I know how.

Jon was heading for Tothill Street again after a jaunt involving the purchase of pristine trousers. (Which wouldn’t fit that well — he had a longer leg than average and a deep, but narrow waist, in conjunction with what was termed a hollow back.)

Not hollow inside, not exactly, which is a mercy. Although that wouldn’t quite be a feature one’s tailor would see.

Not true — it’s just what any proper tailor sees — it’s why he tucks you up in special cloth and tries his best to make you look substantial. He understands that you need help.

Jon was aware that he suffered from areas of sagging — afflicting both the trousers and the man. But at least his bird-struck pair had been dropped in at the dry-cleaner’s and he was operational again.

10.58 — I’ve only been gone half an hour: that’s not bad for a round trip to buy temporary corduroy trousers. I am, as we must now all say, customer-facing and therefore unable to spend a day on show with — as previously established — a potentially lascivious inner-thigh stain.

My customers wouldn’t like it — they would make assumptions.

Always the women.

Even when it’s not.

But these are terrible trousers. Or acceptable, but unsuitable for today. The best of a frightening lot: pink corduroy, gold corduroy, yellow corduroy, powder-blue corduroy, purple … Christ … it was either that or even more horrifying options in linen — twenty seconds after you’ve got inside it, linen’s like wearing a week-old handkerchief, you can’t win … The predictably garish choices preferred by gentlemen of influence. Serves me right for trying to shop in Mayfair, where it’s hard not to be imprisoned by the Henley Colour Chart: camp faux-schoolboy ensembles, and hopes of faux-hooker girls to totter along on a suitable chap’s arm or thereabouts, heels sinking into the turf — the valueless values to which we must aspire …

Says the man who gets anxious if he has to buy a ready-to-wear shirt.

I opted for navy corduroy in the trousers. It was the only sober choice.

And my new shirt is relatively awful, but at least fresh. Blue overcheck tattersall in brushed cotton. I took so long about the trousers, I’d lost the will to choose anything better. Too short in the arms and too loose in the shoulders, but it doesn’t make me seem unreliable or predatory, which many of the others did …

And flannel is soft.

As if that would matter … Only it slightly does, somehow.

It really does.

Mild rash on my forearms — nerves — which don’t actually enjoy the texture of brushed cotton, but that can’t be helped.

He was very breathless, which was not a good sign.

But all is well. More than. Everything is fine. Navy cord. Everything is saveable. I have unused capacity for saving. And that’s fine.

He briefly attempted to remember the name of the retired policeman in Gaslight — the one who rescued Diana Wynyard from Anton Walbrook’s dodgy foreign husband and his tricks with her mind. Jon had always loved the moment when the old copper gave a yell, ‘I’ve saved you!’ and slapped his own thigh. That’s how Jon remembered it — ‘I’ve saved you!’ — someone saying this and being as certain as anything and happy, right through to his boots.

It’s all fine. I’m on track.

I’m in navy cord and a suit jacket without the suit trousers — an orphaned jacket which only agrees with the shirt and barely that — town and country having a fight across all of my surfaces, but I’ll do. I may almost pass.

And he wasn’t too hot. Not flustered.

He did have these small red prickles of something on his skin — despair, unease, panic. If he rolled up his sleeves he suspected he would somehow give himself away and this was an ugliness to add to all his others.

But perhaps they could be forgivable. And at least I only give myself away — I do not offer myself up for sale.

And I was efficacious in the office before disappearing, I didn’t just dash in and out inexplicably. The team is happy and they know that I am happy, or have assumed that I’m happy, in as far as they care, or should care, about whether I’m happy or anything else. We are each of us sculling quietly along in purdah. I can be in both navy cord and purdah … And brushed cotton.

I smell like the inside of the shop. Brisk and powder dry and gentlemanly.

His heart did something not unpleasant in his chest.

I am two kinds of gentlemanly brisk.

I didn’t buy a tie to match my ensemble. My original tie is now in my briefcase like a guilty secret and I am going about with an unencumbered and unbuttoned collar.

I can do that.

Every available tie in the shops showed something one’s meant to shoot: grouse, pheasants, hares. Although nothing that depicted miniature poachers, burglars, travellers, ravers, Rastas, happily married gay couples, birds of prey.

He consciously changed his case from one hand to the other so that he could break his train of thought.

It’s OK.

Nothing is actually irritating me.

I am fine.

Today is fine.

Purdah is fine.

That period of grace within which our masters — but why not call them customers …? If they want me to be customer-facing, then they have to be customers … If they want to be all neo-liberal about it, then they can be customers. It suits them. So. Our customers cannot currently demand and insist quite as they usually do, because they are busy defending themselves against losing power, busy being loudly scared on our behalf, busy having all the usual public emotions, while still other customers do much the same and heartily defend themselves from every natural and unnatural shock that might creep in and thwart them, bar them from righteous success, from finally gaining control of their ambitions. (Or rather giving their ambitions full scope to roam.) Enchanting though all of our possible futures might be, we cannot currently offer our customers anything more than rudimentary assistance. All that remains — sadly, mainly — is to measure up their futures, plan the ways we’d cut our cloth for them, trying to ensure their hollowness won’t show. This is impossible, but not something we aren’t used to.

Which means these are easy days. Should be.

We prepare ourselves for what This Lot will do if they stay in government. We prepare ourselves for what That Lot will do if it turns out they get to play with the special toys. And then we must ponder The Other Lot. And we must even consider the chances of — angels and ministers of grace defend us — Them. Or even Them. We spend time in consideration of Them.

We explore whatever more and less grotesque conjunctions and alliances may be expected to arise and the minority hopes and promises these might unleash. We treat manifestos as if they were written on thrice-blessed tissues of silk, employing a distillation of truth made visible with an admixture of brave men’s tears and each word dusted dry with fine powder derived from noble children’s bones. We take each listed vow as binding. As binding as a woman’s love. If I might say that. And then we calculate the weight of every promise, we judge the urgency and hidden implications of each dream. Just so we know.

I mean, we do it all nicely for them — so they can rush in on that happy post-election morning and squabble about who gets which room at Number 10: inner sanctum, outer sanctum, sofas or easy chairs, Cabinet Room, White Room, Ground Floor, First Floor … Which spare bathroom can they convert …? They’ll cobble together a Cabinet within the next forty-eight hours … remember who’s been promised what, which oversqueezed peach has been twice and thrice promised elsewhere … And one sentence must follow another, put a shine on the Queen’s Speech, so that it can be rushed off to hit the goatskin and be all ready for Her Majesty’s Voice … Goatskin … Written on sodding goatskin — says it all. Or rather the Queen says it all — once it’s been presented on bended knee … Which also, as above …