A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

Smith predicts that what is wrong must plod onwards, grind down its own wrong road until it has destroyed almost everything and can only continue destroying, can only destroy itself.

And I actually — fuck — do believe that.

He inhaled like a man who wanted to do business.

I am a creature of long memory and immoderate belief.

He wanted, actually, to shout out, ‘Captain of Murderers’ in Leslie Howard’s 1940s English accent — one of the many you no longer hear, one filled with an English way of thinking which has also been extinguished.

Captain of Murderers …

That’s one, or both of us …

‘This Milner thing …’ Jon felt his head twitch, which was unfortunate, because it indicated stress — but it wasn’t so fatal a tell now they were friendly, well accommodated, ‘I really can’t help you that much with him, Harry. I don’t know the man and I don’t see … I may be mistaken … what purpose my getting to know him might serve. He seems very much a spent force. In other times, he could have regrouped and been a problem, but these aren’t other times. He’s a dinosaur.’

Chalice licked his lips. ‘Takes one to know one … No offence.’ And he strolled to look out of the window at the broad and high and dark and evening stillness of Pall Mall. ‘Milner’s not quite the problem, not exactly. The leaks are the problem. There are too many. And they’re too targeted. They are strategic. Some shifty little shit is kicking up dust, stamping his feet.’

From you, that’s a compliment — you shifty little shit. The boys — and girls — from the Darknet, the shadowy 4chan types, they called me a Moralfag.

Jon speaking as his thoughts gallop past him, ‘And Milner’s the contact for that?’

Moralfag’s a compliment, too.

‘He doesn’t seem quite up to it …’

‘Milner’s had none of them, but he’s running with them once they’re out. He seems to be actively avoiding any close connection, which seems slightly … odd. And he’s digging — we heard him spooning out his little tunnels, late at night — test shafts … And as he’s the loose cannon, as he’s got the big mouth, we feel he’d be the best line to pursue back to the source. He’s a horny old hack, a pre-Wapping drama queen — loves big reveals and purple prose.’

‘And you really think he’s holding something, knows sources? That he would tell me?’ This being a legitimate question, asked in a legitimate tone.

Chalice avoided making an answer, ‘We’d like to know if he’s holding something — other than his sweaty, alky dick, that is. We’d like you to check his hairy palms, Jon … Have a regular look at him. Just lately he’s walking around like a man with a platinum knob — as if he is finding himself more than averagely precious. He broke a little something today — but not much, not quite what he seems to think he’s holding.’

‘Is he holding, though? Is he bluffing?’

Jon stared at the man’s back, felt secure in loathing the curve of his skull, the slightly low left shoulder, the undefended view of a liar.

They never look quite the thing — the liars — not unless they can give the full-frontal view. Not even very good liars can lie with the back of their head.

‘What do you think, Jon?’

‘Me?’ Jon sighed as a tired and overstretched public servant might. ‘As I’ve said. I don’t see that he’s got a light in his eye about anything. He is a show-off, as you say, and he’d at least have hinted this afternoon — he was genuinely quite drunk. He would have wanted to let me know he was sitting on at least a straight flush before the flop.’

Chalice fancies himself at poker, yearns for the days of the Clermont Club and the glamour of white-tie losses.

Jon played his own kind of bet. ‘ God knows … you’d think someone would have leaked about me, that he’d have heard something of it. He’d have been bound to mention, it would make a fun story for a slow Sunday morning — senior civil servant enjoys …’

‘A harem? Hot and cold running cunt ?’ Chalice turned neatly on his heel and pressed back into the room. There was no smile this time.

No. I made a bad bet. I take it back.

But I am all smooth.

But I’ve offered the wrong fucking bluff …

But I can breathe easy … visibly easy … I’m OK.

Nevertheless, Jon’s arms and legs lost their muscle tone for a horrible plunge of cold time.

Your feet go numb first with hemlock …

Meanwhile he thought softly what Chalice said aloud, ‘Ah, Jon, but if Milner did know about you — if any of them did — you’d be just the man to lean on for information …’

Jon sinking into his breath, keeping his breath, still and still and still and calm. He produced a frown, an evident instant of distaste, anger. ‘And you think that? Of me?’

This hunting pack kind of laugh, a hound’s laugh, escaped Chalice as he patted his hands together — so, so, so — and then chuckled on with, ‘We thought it a possibility. That’s why — for goodness’ sake — we made sure all the heavies already know about you and your sad little headfucks on paper and your sad little marriage. We told them it’s no kind of news and that they all have it, so why bother running it? We stopped their guns. Bedroom frolics they would have loved, a man in his forties, a credible man, that would be different …’ Chalice tilted his head to one side. ‘But no offence, Jon, but a thinning memo-shuffler who’s outlived his hopes of promotion penning damp little letters, writing down his wanks, the scraggy old lad keeping busy … All rather too disgusting. You’re not a story. You’re more a cry for help …’

Jon kept his fists — he suddenly had fists — in positions of violent stillness, cramped at the ends of his arms. He nodded neatly, like a memo-shuffler. He kept his mind in suspension, locked away from all activity and harm.

Stillness.

I will meet you.

Stillness.

I will …

Jon kept nodding, drifting his head down so that he could not see Harry Chalice, not even his feet, and so that it was possible to say, ‘I do have an appointment now, though, Harry, and I would like to keep it if you wouldn’t mind.’

A pause floated in and made the air taste slightly metallic, unwholesome.

There was the sound of a jacket being buttoned — that tiny disturbance.

I will meet you.

I’m all right.

I’m a good man.

I do my best.

‘All right, Jon. Off you trot.’

A young man, possibly a student, stands in a Circle Line subway train. The car is half empty and he could sit if he likes, but he may not be aware of this. His eyes are closed and he wears headphones which are leaching the ghosts of music into the space around him. He holds tight to an overheard rail and rocks only gently, slowly, with the motion of the floor under his feet, even though the passengers near him can hear the driving speed of the beat, that rapid and tinny insistence, which must be something almost overwhelming in his head.

Eyes turn to him, irritated, disapproving.

At St James’s Park three girls enter the carriage, brushing past him and opening his eyes.

They also choose not to sit and, instead, gather opposite him. They look at each other. They smile. They begin dancing to what they can gather of his spilling music: arms lifting, bodies swaying, answering the thin call of what he offers, perhaps in spite of himself, perhaps as a demonstration of his general thoughtlessness.

He watches them as they shuffle-walk closer, swing and bump.