Serious Sweet (5 page)

Jon turned at the brewery corner – sucking in the malty air – and started to lope for the Underground. Val's had never been that handy for public transport. All this nonsense meant he was late and the Tube wouldn't cut it, time-wise, and the rush hour was going to cripple any cab's progress – if he could even find one. She'd made him have to deal with the rush hour. That was bad of her.

Peter will naturally mention my trousers and Chiswick to others, to the denizens around him, which will make for an inflammatory combination.

Once the sticky type of word got round, it stayed round and rumours of a sexual nature were the tastiest for onlookers and the most adhesive.

No, not that
.

His current predicament had nothing to do with women, or a woman, in the erotic sense.

No, not that.

But everyone would assume. They thought he had women, that he had some ludicrous stable of complacent partners and rushed from one bed to another dispensing sex.

No, not that.

If you trace things to their sources …

During his marriage he'd been taken as neuter, treated like an invalid – patronised by some and softly avoided by others who didn't want his assumed deficiencies to infect them. And those men who knew his wife in the sporting sense … some were brash
with him, some guilty, some gentle. Being married to an adulteress taught you a lot about human nature.

After the divorce very little had changed, although he'd seemed to be accepted as less contagious. And he'd been able, for a few translucent weeks, to identify even the most covert of the colleagues she had encountered, come across, had … Each of the men had displayed an underlying tension he could only assume was caused by fears that Valerie might now intend to marry and then betray them.

Although I must not exaggerate. It wasn't so many men. Not that many. It was only enough. I suppose one could frame it in those terms. It was enough to satisfy her needs, which I was not.

Beyond that stage, there were pats on the shoulder, rueful and complicit looks, invitations involving pubs, or coming round for dinner to get a change of air, meet the wife and kids.

Jon had sidestepped each offer of hospitality and been punctual, reliable in his working life – which was to say the whole of his life, pretty much – and had given no indications of internal crisis.

What I feel …

Well, if I don't know at present it doesn't matter … Except it does feel … I do feel … as if I have misplaced something of importance and forgotten what … And Christ knows, I haven't and can't and mustn't forget anything today …

It's as if I am ill … as if my skin were someone else's … There's a strain … the obvious strain … which I hope is not obvious …

And then, it had been on a Thursday morning – he'd never taken to Thursdays, they weren't as generous as Fridays should be –
today is an exception but could rally –
they weren't as workman-like and peaceable as Wednesdays, Thursdays were bitter … On a Thursday, he'd discovered he'd been turned into this whole new figure of fun.

The word had been put round. A number of words, to be accurate: Lucy, Sophia … words such as those words. And I was declared a divorcé now off his leash. One and all have since assumed that I am, in some manner, taking up where Valerie left off.

Not that she has left off. Not that I am presently left on.

Jon was far from the river by now, had passed – surely and inevitably had passed – the usual priggishly well-trimmed Chiswick hedges and lopped trees at a pressing but sustainable speed. Which was to say, he did have to assume he must have done that. He was no longer on his wife's pavement, was able to realise that he'd travelled quite a way …

I started by passing the brewery – that recollection is clear – Valerie still gets a ration of free beer to make up for the ambient scent of brewing. Not that she's a beer drinker, of course. Unless terribly pressed. I think she sometimes cooked with it.

Then after the brewery there must have been streets … There were, are streets … houses … mature magnolias … anal-retentive privet and masonry apparently covered with royal icing …

His head shook, perhaps only internally, as if he'd been dunked in water and was trying to rid himself of some flowing, cloying burden, the way it filled his ears.

Chiswick High Street is a bit of a walk from Val's, it takes … usually not as long as it seems to have taken … But I am, at present, in the high street.

But something, lots of somethings, come before that …

But I can't recall them …

Which is too many buts again.

But I'm here … The laws of physics dictate that Chiswick must therefore have existed as I passed through it, but was somehow unaware.

He couldn't quite explain how this had happened, but his head – and the rest of him, all the way down to his feet, his totality – was already in the high street and this change of location had taken place apparently in one blank instant and yet – he examined his watch again, as if it would be helpful and informative, when in fact it was only scary – his journey had also definitely taken far too long. He had significantly misplaced himself.

I … I should be feeling concerned perhaps … I'm not that, though. I'm not that, either …

He flagged a cab, resigned to the fact that the traffic would murder him and only compound his problem, which was lateness, rather than the problem with his interior, which he couldn't
identify, and the problems with his exterior which were … They were just …

Their name is legion. Their name is Rebecca and Lucy, Sophia and … Christ.

His heart pattered. ‘Tothill Street, please.' And he set his fingers to the cab's door handle almost as if he doubted it would be there.

The driver nodded a consent and Jon climbed in, his limbs more unruly than necessary, right hand clutched around his briefcase as if it were a safe support.

Like gripping the armrests on your seat when your plane hits a storm front – you're holding on to what may drop and kill you. Something to do with our history as apes – we used to be fine if we hung on tight, so we keep on clinging to ease our tensions.

Of course, if the entire tree was ruined and dropping with you, then you'd be better off letting go …

‘Actually, sorry … I have to get some trousers.' No one but Jon needed to know that and the back of the driver's head seemed to reflect this truth eloquently. ‘That is … I'll … if you can stop when we see somewhere … Damn … no, there won't be anywhere open … Unless … you don't know somewhere …? An early-morning trouser …? Provider …? I mean, that's … thanks. Tothill Street.'

Jon forced his spine, his intentions, to stop craning forward. He could get there for half-past eight – behind schedule, but before nine – and this would pass and would be OK, if imperfect. He preferred to be in before the busyness, but it would be fine. He was a professional of some rank – he could have done better after all these years, but had a not unnoticeable rank and could deserve the confidence of those with whom he dealt. That was understood. He would overcome the trouser issue. It was not unethical to ask a staff member, maybe, to go and purchase … No, it had overtones. Could one tell a female subordinate the length of one's inside leg? Or outside leg for that matter?

In my proper context, I can make decisions. But I'm not in context, I'm in a cab.

Could one ask, then, a male staff member, someone with trouser experience from a male point of view …? No, it wasn't a prudent use of public funds.

Civil servant squanders man hours on fashion-buying jaunts.

Deputy Director experiences … what? Wildlife mishap. Midlife mishap. Late-life mishap. Trouser debacle.

Deputy Director Jonathan Sigurdsson suffers ambulant blackout in Chiswick – cause for concern.

He couldn't work out how he'd ended up in the high street.

That was surprising. He didn't like to be anywhere surprising.

It's not to do with women, though.

No, not that.

St Martin's Lane, near Wyndham's Theatre: a purple balloon is carried by light breezes over the heads of pedestrians and then moves safely across the busy road. As it goes it drifts lower, rolling softly over the bonnet of a passing car. It finally drops almost perfectly by the feet of a man in his thirties, quite formally dressed, who is standing at the kerb. He picks up the balloon. He straightens and stands, holding it between both palms. He smiles. He smiles so much.

JON LEANED HIS
cheek flat to the cab window as London stuttered by beyond it. He was halfway to the office, but no further. Matters were conspiring, according to the cab driver, who also found himself unable to comment on whether they'd be lucky, or crawling and stalled for another half an hour, if not longer. Cunning and manful dodging along alleys had resulted only in their being trapped by the apparently psychotic helmsman of a large delivery van in a space within which only bicycles or mice could possibly manoeuvre.

‘Smug, aren't they?' the driver remarked.

‘I beg your pardon.'

‘Times like this they get smug – the cyclists. Not so smug when a lorry hits 'em. I'd make them take a test and earn a licence. For their own good.'

‘That's certainly an opinion.' Jon let his eyes close and carefully made himself think of Berlin earlier this year and seeing Rebecca.

Nice. A consolation. Necessary. And important to spend time.

A holiday for them both. One day, the Sunday, he'd bought them a boat tour on the Spree – bundled up for the cold, the quite kindly March cold – and he'd leaned his cheek flat to the barge's chill window as they passed by the Bode Museum, the building fixed in the water, right at the edge of Museum Island like a high round prow, an impossible vessel. Waves patted the stonework at its foot, sneaked and rolled and faltered prettily.

Light in blades on the water, bridges menacing only softly overhead and then a broad European sky. The Fernsehturm spiking up into crisp blue – looks like Sputnik after an accident with a capitalist harpoon, a speared ball, a penetrated curve, although remarkably asexual, unsexual … then again, stainless steel and concrete aren't notoriously arousing. Never were – not even for Young Pioneers.

I'm not obsessed with sex. Other people are obsessed with my being obsessed with sex.

The Berlin TV Tower – prop for some never-made Bond movie, as fatally dated and inappropriate as everybody's visions for their futures turn out to be
. Für Frieden und Sozialismus –
as if either was possible anywhere. Few things say 1960s East Germany like the Fernsehturm, still laden with suggestions of circular ripples emanating from its globe, expanding rings of peaceful and anti-fascist socialist know-how that pushed nobly – with appropriate self-criticism – through the brown-coal-scented air – that particular Braunkohl bitterness – broadcasting the one true faith and a kids' show about the Little Sandman who sent boys and girls off to sleep. Instead of picking them up in Stasi vans and sending them off to other, less pleasant places. Or inviting them to variations on a theme of suicide.

East's a beast and West is best.

I could be that simple, then. I could. I was clear-minded.

We all like to be clear-minded and simple.

The Terrible Enemy is different now. And the same. It serves the same purpose.

We like to repeat our themes – like good opera and bad television.

But do I now dwell amongst the least beastly?

Where are there not beasts? Encouraged and permitted and condemned beasts …

I never would have suited the Foreign Office.

And the FO only recruit the cream from the top of the churn. Or the shit from the top of the water. I'm neither I'd hope, although I could be mistaken.

Plus, I sound foreign … I have an unsuitable name. And that would be one of my repeating themes.

Good opera, bad telly and worse propaganda … Of which I watched a great deal, along with the Sandman show, when I was a student – over in Berlin and fastidiously observing. I've always been a man for details, can't get enough of them. Not a spy, not a bit of it, not really. An observer. Product of an unsentimental education.

It's the least you can do – watch.

Watch it all tumbling down like the Wall – Berliner Mauer, the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart. Never a good sign when your wording tries that hard to fight reality, it suggests the beginning of your tumble. Yes, it does. It always does.

But I'd rather watch beauty.

And is that a denial of reality, or an attempt to embrace it? I think I am too tired to know. I hope I am too tired to know.

That day with Becky, trying to be on holiday with Becky, I watched the city moving, everything moving – details, details – as we motored on. Mild to uncomfortable guilt – the usual – that here she is, an adult, and I'd been so often held back in the evenings and still working when she was a child, when it was time to talk, to be, to set my own dear baby safe in her bed. Night night.

I've missed a lot.

School concerts, parents' evenings, the time she fell off a pony and scared herself, the times when we should have talked.

I missed the lot. Almost.

I've missed my life, I think. I think that might be true. If overly emotive as something to mention.

Regrets apart – and I do always pack them for holidays – in Berlin I was having a good day. In terms of weather. An airy afternoon ahead for hands in pockets and brisk walking, arm-in-arming it along Unter den Linden, wandering about in the theme park and high-gloss purchasing opportunity that central Berlin has become. Poor old Mitte – freedom has done some ridiculous things to you.

Which isn't what I was thinking – I was full of how much, how so much I like being arm in arm.

And that weekend she hadn't let me yet.

But on the boat Becky had taken his hand. Their barge had sway-glided on while an instructional narration had attempted to
intrude via the tour-guiding headphones that he'd refused to wear. And Jon had closed his eyes against the glare, or to prevent the leakage of his own variation on a theme of stupidity, or to prevent glancing across at his only daughter's disappointment in him.

But then she had taken his hand.

Always the same way, but always more – she is always more.

The stroke of her forefinger at his wrist and then the warm, soft enquiry when her hand closed over his knuckles, when her thumb slipped under to find out the heart of his palm and make it rest.

Beautiful. A lovely shock.

Not that it was remotely unheard of. They took each other's hands quite a lot. She'd just surprised him on that occasion because they'd spent the weekend fighting until that point: Friday evening on the plane was unhappy, their Saturday had been spent bickering in the Old and New Museums, the National Gallery, the Pergamon Museum – they liked their culture rigorous and swift, or at least he did – then there was unease in a restaurant, and this morning: fighting, fighting, sulking, fighting and sulking. His fault.

‘You booked it on purpose, Dad.'

‘I didn't, Becky.' She was right, though – he'd chosen the Hotel Sylter Hof on purpose. ‘I didn't choose it on purpose. The place was recommended and it's nice?' When he was on the back foot, everything emerged as a question. Especially questions. ‘Don't you think it's nice? But afterwards I did notice, I checked and I saw that it was … that there was … is a history to the place. And I didn't change it to somewhere else. I mean, it's not happening now – it's history.'

Which fundamentally contradicts everything I believe about history and she bloody knew it.

‘And it is … I have to say … I mean, Rebecca, Berlin has a past …'
I sounded like an utterly patronising moron.
‘There's no getting away from it without not being in Berlin. And we are in Berlin. So I didn't change it. Because it's nice. As a hotel.'

She always understood when he was lying, when he could do nothing else. ‘You can't help it, can you? Being miserable. You have to be.'

Becky didn't add
Mother was right
, but he heard it in any case – the way that only dogs can hear those special whistles when they're called to heel. ‘I'm not miserable. I'm interested. I like to keep on being interested.'

‘Implying that you think I've stopped learning. I'm not interesting now I'm with Terry?'

‘Not at all.' She glanced at him, appraising, while he bleated, ‘No.' She always knew.

That was the first of Saturday's spats. And she had a perfectly valid point: it was probably not fair to pick a hotel – albeit a perfectly acceptable hotel with good reviews – primarily because it stood on the site of what had been the Jüdischen Bruderverein until its forced sale in 1938. And a forced sale did leave an atmosphere of a kind – the pestilent kind – and then, because those intoxicated by the use of force develop a taste for irony, nurture a specialist and heavy-handed brand of humour, the building was taken over by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt Department IV B4 – the department responsible for ‘Jewish Affairs', which oversaw the seizure of Jews' homes and possessions, the removal of their German citizenship.

If there's a department for you, then you must be a problem. A solution to you must be sought.

So he and his daughter were, yes, sleeping not quite where Adolf Eichmann slept, but where he worked, where he and his administrators, his planners and implementers, his civil servants worked. Becky and Jon had been eating their warm little kaiser rolls – warm little Berlin
Schrippen
 – and their hot boiled eggs that morning inside the shadow of a building where human beings in clean and orderly surroundings had proved unable to connect their paperwork with other human beings elsewhere, or with reality, or with pain.

Unable, or unwilling, or uninterested.

Consenting to one hell, so they could avoid another.

Most likely there had been a canteen back then, maybe other warm little Austrian
Kaiserbrötchen
, other
Schrippen, Schwarzbrot,
maybe eggs.

Perhaps not always eggs, perhaps not butter, what with the rationing.

The place had been bombed in the end, like so much of the city. Lord, hadn't it? He and Becky had already explored the sharply modern and forward-looking riverbank development on foot, its immaculate geometries laid out there between the restored Reichstag and the railway station.

The RAF reduced that whole area to a town planner's dream – wall stubs and rubble, only the Swiss Embassy left standing and that by chance. It's still there now. And who can guess what it remembers, where it echoes. Not that Speer hadn't thought he should wipe out the streets himself and start again – build a temple to bloodshed, a monstrous dome as big as a fake mountain and colonnades and boulevards for parading. The things leaders need to help them feel truly like leaders. And anything's possible once you've cleared away inconvenient residences and residents.

Efficient and muscular administration would be required if one were to achieve a plan of such … A legion of servants would have to serve.

What remained of RSHA Department IV B4 had been torn down in the sixties. And a number of people must have planned and some other people must have given appropriate permissions for and some further people must have built and then maintained and some other people must still be making the customary inspections of what now stood in its place. It was a fairly pleasant hotel in which to house temporary visitors who might be unaware of the site's past and might also not be infected with fatal levels of obliviousness, although no enquiries were made into guests' moral character, there were no formal vetting procedures and acceptance of bookings was based solely on apparent ability to pay.

Jon hadn't slept properly during his Friday night at the Hotel Sylter Hof. This was partly because, stretched out in the dark of an anonymous bed, he could still hear, to a degree, the neat ruffling of terrible file cards and the clean peck of ribbon typewriters, summoning in filthy things. They disturbed. As did the thoughts of easy canteen chatter, boredom, office gossip and faraway corpses.

He had lain and checked – fastidiously – that he was the man he thought, who tried to do his job well and to think well, while keeping his grip on wider historical perspectives. Jon always tried
to remember how wrong life could go, because that was in his nature and also because, possibly, he came from the humanities. He'd been a European-history specialist. And hiring graduates from the humanities had once served a purpose for the civil service: it had perhaps intended to gather a workforce used to doing more than bouncing along the surface of a subject – or even personnel not unfamiliar with the concepts underlying humanity. Specialists could be called on when necessary: accountants, mathematicians. That had been the way.

IT providers … they were specialists, although Christ knew what purpose they specially, actually served – it seemed one simply fed them money and, some while later, they converted it into insecure shit, uninformative shit, unworkable shit and, in general, shit. And economists – why did you need them? Economics was not a humanity. It was not now, as currently practised, a science. It involved little more than submission to a cult. It made him long for maths, the inarguable truth and perfection of maths.

And he'd always hated maths.

The only mathematical form that I can appreciate is music. Which transcends maths – and a person has to be transcendent somewhere … even me.

Howlin' Wolf wasn't thinking of maths when he played. He just felt it. He could feel.

‘Heard the whistle blowin', couldn't see no train. Way down in my heart, I had an achin' pain. How long, how long, baby how long.'

You could see what he felt, know it, share it, taste it.

It was pure in him and strong.

And Howlin' Wolf was also an orderly man and a good boss – in him that was compatible with letting feelings out, with letting himself out. He could burn and sweat and shudder and wail and wail and wail when he needed it for the music. He could keep safe otherwise.