The Knives (30 page)

She asked after his day. He gave her fragments, as no part of it had been anything he cared to revisit. Offering some impressions of the ruckus in Parliament Square he withheld any reference to Alex and the reason for his late arrival to the theatre, telling her instead of the injured youth he had seen being so fiercely defended from the clutches of police by his pious girlfriend.

‘It did strike me’, he said, after a big gulp of wine that made his eyes water, ‘how easy it is for people to get badly hurt at these
things. The cops have plenty of barriers on hand, but really they could do with a few more medics.’

He was thinking of Alex, weighing the resentment he felt toward the boy against the natural desire to prevent any harm ever befalling him. Lately, he couldn’t deny, he had wanted Alex to suffer some rude awakening, some pointed encounter with the sharp end of reality. Yet to imagine his son in any real distress was a plaintive thing that clutched at his innards.

Abigail wiped a sharp knife clean then wiped her hands on a cloth. ‘I hadn’t pictured you as so much the bleeding heart.’

He grunted. ‘Yeah, well. When people are hurt you have to help them, even if they’re the enemy. Especially if they’re the enemy. That’s how the British Army’s made its name the world over.’

‘One way it’s made its name.’ She smiled without giving him the favour of her gaze.

‘I’m serious. I saw it umpteen times. Early on in Belfast we got into a gun battle in Andersonstown – spotted a bunch of Provos holed up with guns trained on us, we fired first, went into the building after them and found them bleeding all over the place. And you wouldn’t
believe
the pains we took to patch them into shape. We shot ’em up, yeah, but then we shipped ’em out.’

‘“Shot ’em up” …?’

She was still immersed in plating for two, yet her manner seemed to him as one whose windbag boss had come over for supper, to be indulged and politely suffered. It took another moment or two for him to feel his disapproval tick up to the familiar register.

‘Yes, “shot ’em up”. It was their plan to shoot holes in us so I – we, my men and I – we fucking shot them up instead.’

She turned to him, bearing two identical servings on ivory dishes. ‘Okay, David. Okay? They’re not here now.’

After they had eaten – the work of mere minutes – she sat in an armchair across from him in her smart low-lit living space, the
programme from the theatre in her lap, a small smile round her lips that rather maddened him, reminding him as it did of her interviewing mode. He gestured to the full bottle of wine between him, successor to one that he seemed to have polished off by himself.

‘Am I going to drink all of that?’

‘I don’t know, are you?’ She leaned and poured a splash into her glass. ‘I was quite struck by the play. Were you?’

Blaylock shrugged. ‘Mixed bag.’

‘How did you rate his political acumen? Coriolanus? Do you suppose a fellow like that could function in Westminster today?’

Blaylock swigged wine and shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t last five minutes. His own man and all that, but … a politician can’t be that badly divorced from the mass of the people. Even though the play takes them all for bloody fools.’

‘Ah, then you agree with the guy writing in the programme notes.’ She read aloud. ‘“While ostensibly proposing a debate between authoritarianism and the democratic will of the people, Shakespeare contrives to make the case against democracy near irrefutable. He has Coriolanus embody a standard the plebs can’t get close to: the great man whose word must be heeded, since he knows for a fact, by bloody experience, what the proles can’t possibly imagine from the purview of their meagre little lives. This is a devilish contention, but then in writing
Coriolanus
Shakespeare was of the devil’s party, and probably knew it …”’

‘Who said that?’

‘Nick Gilchrist. The filmmaker?’

Blaylock sniffed, feeling his foot tap the carpet as though it were his tail.

‘Yeah, I interviewed him once. He lives just a few streets from here, on Elgin Crescent? Quite a fascinating man. Fairly political.’

‘You mean “political” as someone who has a bunch of opinions? As opposed to a disposition to try and do politics.’

Abby’s eyes narrowed amusedly. ‘So you know his work?’

‘He’s actually my ex-wife’s current … partner.’

‘No! Really?’

‘You sure you didn’t know that?’

‘How would I? It’s not general knowledge, is it?’ She sat up with a new keenness, so making Blaylock conscious of how he had rather slumped into his chair, wine glass to his chest. ‘It’s not like you tell me anything, David. Or do you think I’ve been “researching” you?’

‘C’mon. You did a bit of research, right? It’s your livelihood.’

‘I’d have said things have developed a bit between us since. To a point, anyway. No, in terms of your, oh, “private life” – I’ve just been assuming there are things I’m not to know.’

‘I’ve told you,’ he said with a sigh, ‘a fair old bit about myself, Abby.’

‘Yes. Things you might tell a journalist, if only to put them off.’

‘Well,’ he gestured, vexed, ‘how much do I know about you?’

‘David, you could ask me anything. I’m not ashamed. The fact is you’ve hardly asked me a thing since the first night we met.’

‘You’ve been counting? Look – I’ve thought we have a pretty good understanding of one another. But maybe not.’

She sat back with a rueful head-shake, supporting her chin in her hand. ‘I don’t know, David … What’s going on?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What have we got, you and me?’

He met her gaze while casting around inwardly for some rejoinder. She was right, of course. He had entered this romance with barricades carefully erected around the area nearest to his heart. Now she was only pressing him for the closeness any lover would expect. He remained resistant. And yet now, quite suddenly, he sensed a familiar kind of crumbling-unto-collapse in their relations, and the idea that a dismal day might now conclude in such fashion was abruptly, unutterably depressing to him.

‘Listen … I’m sorry. Really. The disturbances today, in town? My son Alex was there, I saw him, in the thick of it. I went to see him and Jennie tonight, it’s why I was late … The whole thing’s bloody awkward and it’s just … preying on my mind.’

‘Good lord.’ She looked at him closely, clearly computing. Finally she said, ‘Was Alex hurt? Or arrested?’

‘No, god no. He made a sharp exit at just about the right time. But he’s … he’s drawn to that kind of, y’know, protest politics? And I’m not sure he knows what he’s getting into.’

‘What does his mother think?’

‘Oh, she’s big into fighting for rights, Jennie. And she doesn’t think Alex should suffer – I mean, be deterred from things – just because I’m his father. The thing is, but, it could be trouble for him.’

‘Trouble for you, too.’

‘Yeah, that’s what his mother reckons and all. But it’s not the issue.’

‘A factor, though. People love a dysfunctional family in politics. The higher the better. Like Reagan and his kids? This would have those elements. The only thing would top it is if Alex became a ballet dancer …’

Blaylock was mildly amazed to note her new animation, how she now took a keen sip of wine, with a rapt look on her face for which he didn’t much care.

‘Have you thought it through? Worst-case scenarios? Say, if he got nicked swinging off the statue of Churchill?’

‘It’s not something I want to … brainstorm. This isn’t my idea of useful speculation. It’s not
helping
, Abby.’

‘Sorry, I’m just trying to get my head round it. Your problem.’

‘Yeah, well, you sound almost curious to see it happen. I mean, Jesus.’ He lurched from his chair, realising he had nowhere particular to go in the small space, so finding himself looming over her. ‘Jennie doesn’t see a problem, it’s true, but you, you appear to relish it.’

She closed her eyes and turned her head away as if abruptly tired of seeing him before her. ‘Oh David, c’mon. It’s like you just want a fight tonight, any old fight, and I’m here so I’ll do.’

‘I don’t want a fucking fight.’

‘Sure about that?’

She was correct insofar as he felt little now beyond the twinges of irritation, the tenseness of his brow, the desire to prolong the storm.

‘Would you rather I left?’

She rolled her eyes, her shoulders slumped. ‘It’s your decision, David.’

‘Okay. Fine.’ He paced to the kitchen, collected his jacket, hefted his red box. She did not move from her chair. He looked at her from across the kitchen island. She looked back at him and said nothing. She was – he had known it from the start – a tough customer.

Outside Andy was clearly surprised to see the boss stomping back across the street, but he made the call to Martin, and Blaylock then endured a chastening drive back across the river to Kennington.

He was aware he was wincing reflexively, muttering to himself, cursing under his breath, putting his hand to his face. He was aware, too, that Andy watched him silently from the corner of one eye, and Blaylock sensed some unacceptable pity there, and so tried to pull himself round, contemplating some light remark to relieve the gloom of the car. But nothing came, nor by effort of will could he seem to stop the physical tics afflicting him.

The squabble he had found himself in was nothing new – indeed it was starting to seem like his fate. What was novel was the loss of face he felt this time round. A line was running round his head – Nietzsche, if he remembered right, some of whose sayings had been hits with his Sandhurst contemporaries, especially the one about near-death experience somehow making one ‘stronger’
rather than massively debilitated. The one Blaylock had in mind was more slippery.
If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which recurs.

‘Character’ – he associated it with virtue, constancy. But increasingly it seemed to him a cage.
I have a Problem
, he said to himself.
A Problem. ‘When will you do something about your Problem, David?’

He had never cared to talk about it. There had been times when he felt he had more or less psychoanalysed himself, and not unsatisfactorily, either. Yet still his typical experience recurred, and he did nothing else to ward it away. He had to ask himself: was it fear? Faintheartedness, for sure. For when he conjured the thought of ‘seeking help’ it was accompanied immediately by thoughts of the House – gossip round the House, insinuation in the House. That prospect, he realised, did raise an alarm in him – and to be so conscious of his spinelessness was to realise, too, however belatedly, that he would now do something about it.

The request was put simply and casually to Geraldine, that she secure him an appointment around 11 a.m. at his local surgery, but with a female GP – preferably Dr Quayle, whom he remembered to be reliably detached, even semi-distracted. He told himself it was a decision from which he might still retreat if the day’s business turned bad.

In fact the morning brought heartening news from Gavin Ball up in Dudley. The little girl who had suffered the nail in her temple was recovering from a successful surgical removal; meanwhile the manhunt had narrowed to a single individual, his face reconstructed in photo-fit from CCTV.
‘We’ve put it out there and we hope for help from the public.’

He repaired to one of Level Three’s soundproofed ‘study pods’ and closed the door, resolved to phone Abigail and try to repair the damage. He had the words prepared. His call, however, went straight to voicemail and so he recited into a void. ‘Abby, it’s David. Last night … I want to apologise, I was out of order. I got out of hand. The things on my mind, they are what they are but I … obviously should not have lost my temper like that. Please call me when you can.’

After checking into the doctors’ surgery he loitered awhile in the vestibule on his phone, returning a call from his constituency office with regard to a local Labour councillor – one Akhtar Chopra, holder of the portfolio for ‘community cohesion’ – who had been ringing insistently with demands that the FBB’s planned march through Thornfield be banned.

‘I’m seeing the cops directly when I’m up tomorrow, he can see me directly after that,’ Blaylock told Bob Cropper, idly kicking the wall with the toe of his shoe. Through the glass door he heard his name over the tannoy, and hoped that it sounded thoroughly anonymous to the coughers and sniffers huddled in the waiting area.

Dr Quayle was dependably unsmiling, wearing her usual hunted look as he took the hard-backed chair opposite her.

‘It’s a personal matter, a wellbeing issue … For a while now I’ve been conscious of an issue in terms of controlling my temper. It’s been observed, pointed out to me, by people close to me. And it may have had an effect, on my relations … it, I don’t know, could be colouring my judgements on things.’

‘You’re saying you’re prone to temper tantrums?’

Hating the sound of that, while wanting to make progress, Blaylock nodded. Dr Quayle was visibly relieved.

‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a common enough part of life.’

‘I wonder if I would benefit, if there’s someone I could see, talk to, about ways to manage anger?’

‘That would be cognitive behaviour therapy.’ Quayle nodded, clearly yet more convinced she could kick this can down the road. ‘I can offer you a referral, there are a number of providers.’

He nodded and she turned to her computer and clicked her way into a database – then seemed to think again and, rather fearful, swivelled back to him. ‘We’re talking regular weekly two-hour sessions, that’s something you could commit to?’

‘I’d take it seriously, yes, of course.’

She returned to her screen and, biting her lip, hit a key to print.

‘The suspect’s name is Kristian Vollan,’
Gavin Ball updated.
‘Norwegian, late twenties, works in a foam rubber factory on an industrial estate outside Birmingham. An employee clocked him from the CCTV we put out, it wasn’t the cleanest image but the fellow had had his suspicions, funnily.’

Blaylock whistled down the line in appreciation. The Dudley investigation was moving with truly gratifying speed.

‘He was alone?’

‘We’re making enquiries with the Norwegian authorities. But, we have his computer, it’s all there, his interests. The pieces. So probably alone, yes, but he’s plugged into Norwegian far-right groups plus a bit more of a wider web clan opposed to “the genocide of whites” and the “Islamic conquest of Europe”.’

‘Dear god.’

‘He seems to be a fan of the Free Briton Brigade? Attended some convention they were at. His Facebook page is full of praise for them.’

‘That ought to widely known, I’d say. Come the time.’

Feeling strangely buoyed he repaired again to a quiet soundproofed pod, took paper from pocket and, before he could stop himself, tapped out the Hampstead number for Dr Amanda Scott-Stokes, Chartered Clinical Psychologist, BSc, MClinPsych, DPsych.

The voice that answered was owlishly posh, slightly lisping, but business-like.
‘Yes, yes. Not next Monday but the Monday after? Good, good.’

Marking off his accomplishment, feeling himself worthy of merit, he tried Abigail again.

‘Hello, David …’

‘You got my message?’

‘I did. Yes …’

‘But, you didn’t call.’

‘I didn’t know what to say to you … I still don’t, really. But I think there’s something we need to talk about. And I’m sorry to have to say it …’

He sat down, as if he had been told to, feeling like a much younger and less assured man.

‘What’s on your mind?’

‘I think … things have happened and … I’ve thought about it and I don’t feel things are right between us. For either of us. If it wasn’t for the jobs we’re in it might be different. But because of that I think maybe we need to … just say it’s a thing that isn’t really in the stars …’

Some moments later, the line dead, Blaylock was still muttering to himself, replaying the tape in his head, formulating a position, as he held the door handle and readied a face with which to face the world. He knew, no question, that he was processing an abrupt reversal of fortune, a rejection he had just not seen coming.

And his chief feeling was humiliation, sticking to him unpleasantly as if tipped out over his head. His warm feelings for Abby – narrow as they had been – had turned in a trice to loathing. For, whatever his efforts at self-persuasion, she had remained a trifle in his eyes, without a jot of Jennie’s substance. He should have been the one to decide when the game was done. Instead he had been left feeling done up.

Then a darker thought fell on him, as he recalled Mark Tallis’s dim view of her all the way along. Had Abby really been playing him? Could he have been so mistaken? The thought was too terrible, so he pushed it away and pushed out through the door.

Feeling so hollowed, Blaylock was in no mood to plaster on a fake smile and take a bow at a meaningless awards ceremony. And yet he knew the ‘Politician of the Year’ could not possibly send apologies: there would be no hiding place from the low-level bitchery he would set on himself. And so he made the effort to brush up, get robust, appear unfazed. He told himself it was no crime to take, for one night only, some validation in the praise of Westminster’s insular press corps.

Within minutes of stepping inside the venue’s plushness – its walnut panels, damask drapes and dripping chandelier – he wanted to be gone. Near enough his first sight was Abigail in the midst
of a press table, unimpressive male specimens at either side of her. After the briefest of eye contacts he made sure to look elsewhere.

He was seated by Caroline Tennant, the
Criterion
’s ‘Minister of the Year’, with whom small talk was, as ever, futile; though she did ask him with an authentic perplexity if he could explain the distinction between their respective awards.

‘It means you’re considered competent and I’m considered “colourful”,’ Blaylock replied, topping up their glasses.

Once proceedings were under way, though, there was nothing that could dissolve his dislike of every aspect of the awful spectacle, from the piped music that heralded each speaker to the heavy-handed light-heartedness of every speech: fake esteem, fake conviviality, it seemed to Blaylock, when the sum of petty hatreds and envies in the room, suitably refined, would be enough fuel to fire a rocket into space.

‘You’re not enjoying it, David,’ Caroline murmured after he had absently missed a prompt to applaud.

‘How did you guess?’

‘Something to do with the way you claw at your face, I suppose.’

He did sit to attention, however, for Madolyn Redpath, winner of ‘Campaigner of the Year’, in a black dress less schoolgirlish than her usual preference. He hadn’t seen her for a while and felt, with some sort of a pang, that he had rather missed her. In these surroundings she did cut a notably unspoilt figure.

Then came his own turn, and after generous applause he hefted his plaque and stood at the dais blinking into the lights.

‘I feel a bit unworthy, like perhaps I’ve been given this just for thumping somebody. And that’s not politics, as we know. Though it can be great fun. If you don’t believe me, just think for a minute, what it would be like to thump the person you’re sitting next to.’

The room, previously so generous, now seemed put off.

‘Forgive me. My jokes are often misunderstood. Even by me.
But I won’t cry, won’t go live in self-pity city. That would go against the image I’ve so carefully cultivated … and for which I expect you’ve bestowed on me this honour – so, thank you and goodnight.’

Proceedings done, the room began to empty, Caroline saying her cool goodbyes to him before hastening out to her carriage. Clocking Andy at the door, Blaylock poured a last bumper from the full-ish burgundy on the table, and looked up to see Madolyn standing over him, glass in hand, plaque under her arm, further encumbered by a large clutch bag.

‘Congratulations.’

‘Back at you.’ He held out his hand and she shook, smiled and sat down beside him. He was yet more admiring of her dress, a structured number with buttons down the front that fastened across the collarbone. She fixed him with her direct and gleaming gaze.

‘I’ve owed you a call for a while, actually. To say well done on what you did on women’s refuges. The stand you took.’

‘I was lobbied very hard. As you know, I’m not impervious to a case well made. But, thank you.’

‘You know,’ she ventured, ‘if I gave the impression I thought you were the worst there ever was – I mean, I expect you think I’m awfully sanctimonious – but, so you know, I do believe you’re a decent man.’

‘That does actually mean a lot to me.’

Looking at her intent eyes he feared he might blush, even if the ruby-redness were largely the work of the burgundy.

‘I have something for you,’ she said, lifting her bag to her lap.

True, he had thought her highly priggish from the off. Yet he couldn’t deny he was pleased she had identified virtue in him. Unease pulled at him, though, as he watched her rummage in the clutch – for one, a discomfiting awareness of how badly he sought
to see himself reflected favourably in a woman’s eyes; for another, the surety that he would disappoint this woman again soon enough, since the world, through it all, remained wicked.

The candle on the table was burning low, the last stragglers leaving, wearied waiters poised to sweep the tables. Peering past the small flame Blaylock saw Abigail glance his way as she left. For a moment he wondered hopefully if perhaps she was singeing a little.

Madolyn had produced a grey bundle and she put it in his hands. He unfolded a cotton tee-shirt bearing the decal legend FEMINIST, and below that, smaller, GOT A PROBLEM WITH IT?

He smiled. ‘Nice. A little snug for me. Maybe I’ll frame it?’

‘You wouldn’t wear it?’

‘Oh, I’d feel a bit … phoney.’

‘You wouldn’t call yourself a feminist?’

‘Well, I mean – do I have to?’

‘If you believe in basic equality for women, then yeah.’

‘I do. I just don’t want to have to swallow a definition you can fit into fifty characters … I mean, I’d rather just be judged on my actions and have it known I’m not a prick about this stuff than have to declare it across my chest. Sorry if that’s a let-down.’

She was indeed giving him a sceptical look, albeit slightly smiling. ‘Yeah well. If we’re doing regrets, I’m sorry I had to mullah you over your fucking ID cards the other week. The fight goes on, right?’

Blaylock rolled his eyes and lifted his glass. ‘Take care of yourself, Maddy.’

He watched her sashay away, feeling a little lifted out of the day’s gloom, some sense of
amour propre
restored.