A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

Alongside them rush three women, who are more out of breath than the children and who are probably the mothers of most if not all of them. The women seem tired, but although they flag now and then, they cannot stop, because their children are racing and unstoppable, they are an inarguable joy and should not be prevented.

At intervals, the women let out steam-whistle hoots, in lieu of doing anything more taxing. And sometimes they are also swept up by this forward motion, this train which is not a train, which is better and safer and more fun than any conceivable train. This makes them run and their faces change into softness and lightness and they laugh.

There is never a point, though, when all of the women laugh together. At least one of them stays watchful, remembers herself, and becomes slower and heavier as a result. But they still run. They can’t help it. Everyone runs.

The children have plainly been allowed to dress according to their own secret logic: there is a towel worn as a cape, there is a mask, there are wellingtons and sandals and a shapeless hat. One boy wears a little suit of black with white bones painted on it and clearly this running about and this being his dead self are both his most favourite things. He runs and runs — the bones of a boy.

Everyone runs.

JON WAS USHERED up the ugly stairs of Chalice’s club — East Berlin could truly not have furnished any building more unsightly — and was then permitted to propel himself into the biscuity, overwarmed air of the Carrington Room. There were stacks of high-end chairs and a few folded tables, presumably ready for functions of some kind, but otherwise the long, low space was simply dominated by a hideous carpet and lighting of an oppressively revealing type.

Chalice was, of course, not already there. It was Jon’s job to be the man who waits and who is taught, once again, that his time is of minimal value.

He decided that he might as well be comfortable and took down a chair to sit on. He set it within sight of a lumpy oil painting depicting some barricade of note in Northern Ireland: 1970s uniforms, Saracens and loose bricks, an image from what, in the light of more recent adventures, now seemed a morally irreproachable and painless campaign.

And that’s how they’re sold now, aren’t they — the Troubles? All soft hats and assisting the civil power — hearts and minds and didn’t we do well? War as a game show.

His eyes wandered over the little greenish figures designed to convey sturdy British anguish and resource. He also considered the figures designed to convey civilian treachery and threat: the classic elongated silhouette of the firebomb-thrower, those cheap estate-dwelling flared jeans, the energy of inadequately disciplined youth.

There’s something about chucking a Molotov cocktail, a bottle of Rafah lemonade, that always looks low-class. The poor man’s napalm.

We have to call it asymmetric warfare these days, don’t we? Rather than burning despair. Depictions of the military at work have never quite been what they were since the static nature of the Western Front bollocksed their cavalry charges. People like horses. People do not like pictures of dead horses lying splay-legged and swollen in mud, being used as temporary landmarks by men who reinforce their trench walls with corpses, having nothing else to hand but an overplus of death.

For an instant he remembered watching a tourist couple posing for each other, turn and turn about, grinning for the camera in front of St Paul’s annual plantation of war-memorial crosses …

As striking a backdrop as any. No meaning required.

Once your wars have been rebranded, re-rebranded — in the end any possible meaning wears away, or simply withdraws and leaves you to it.

Teeth and smiles.

That’s all you want in a photo … Or in a war.

The portraits of current campaigns will have to show descending drones, perhaps the faces of their operators. The instant of accurate annihilation immortalised on canvas in a blossoming of flames — not the instant when the child runs out and all is beyond recalling. The soldiers won’t be there, because we prefer to wage wars without them, such people being servants of the state in which we no longer believe and, likewise, a concept of nationhood we actually should abandon in favour of more exciting definitions involving areas of consumption, zones of commercial influence.

Can I betray my nation, if my nation no longer exists? What if there is no social contract and only a series of punitive arrangements forced upon me by supranational entities? What if these entities have their own, ideologically acceptable armed forces and an admirable ability to float on in glory and in light, high above any taxation or legal restraint? In that case, what is treason? One might ask that. One might.

The painting was giving him a headache, either that or his day was giving him a headache — his day in combination with his personality.

Does anyone truly believe they can outrun history, break free from reality, become transcendent, never pay any kind of price …? Running in camouflage, running in pullovers … Both sets of figures displaying the danger inherent in long memories and immoderate belief. Long hair to keep you safe on the streets, short back and sides to mark you as a target … The occasional civil servant blundering off to Derry, fretting about car bombs and trying it on in a mumble with squaddies, having a go at quoting equivalent rank … Those were the days. So I’ve heard.

I am the civil-service equivalent of a captain — in a fog with the light behind me.

As if …

Jon sniffed, swallowed.

Gets it all out of the system, before I need myself to seem composed.

It’s best to feel I’m simply hiding a pissed-off rant and nothing more … Play the passed-over man. So many reasons that I’m passed over and I truly should be, but let’s agree that it’s currently down to Valerie, to women, to the mail drop, the courting and maybe one odd conversation I had with another man’s wife in 1987.

In 1987 — that long ago — some woman, somebody’s wife, told me things and I paid attention and I tried to …

I asked questions and was quietly told that I shouldn’t, not thereafter, and also the conversation I thought I’d had with somebody’s wife … Well it hadn’t happened. I was mistaken.

And nothing was sexual.

Nothing is ever sexual.

Nothing is ever said or ever has been, or ever could.

So I stopped asking questions and I’ve behaved as a good boy ought to ever since, as far as any department oversight can know.

I am safe. Look at me, please, examine — I’m so safe.

I am not a manifestation of civilian treachery, civilian threat.

‘Like it, do you?’ Chalice was hamming up the military precision of his walk as he cleared the doorway and crossed the muffling depth of black and fawn carpet.

All soundless is his progress — see, but do not hear where he comes.

It’s somehow terribly tasteless for the likes of Chalice to sound as if they’re walking when they walk — audible effort is something for the other ranks, the boot-wearing classes.

Or it’s meant for the high-heeled accompaniments to one’s evening — gowns and bags and running the show when they can, grabbing their old boys by the cock and leading them round … Not quite admirable, but I can see their point …

Alternative sources of enjoyment for the quiet-footed gentleman — well, they’re entirely silent. At all times. Ask no questions, hear no silence.