by Ian Mcewan
The Prime Minister, who still had hold of his hand, added, “In fact, we've got two of your paintings hanging in Downing Street. Cherie and I adore them.”
“No, no,” Perowne said.
“Yes, yes,” the Prime Minister insisted, pumping his hand. He was in no mood for artistic modesty.
“No, I think you—”
“Honestly. They're in the dining room.”
“You're making a mistake,” Perowne said, and on that word there passed through the Prime Minister's features for the briefest instant a look of sudden alarm, of fleeting self-doubt. No one else saw his expression freeze and his eyes bulge minimally. A hairline fracture had appeared in the assurance of power. Then he continued as before, no doubt making the rapid calculation that given all the people pushing in around them trying to listen, there could be no turning back. Not without a derisive press tomorrow.
“Anyway. They truly are marvellous. Congratulations.”
One of the aides, a woman in a black trouser suit, cut in and said, “Prime Minister, we have three and a half minutes. We have to move.”
Blair let go of Perowne's hand and without a farewell beyond a nod and a curt pursing of the lips, turned and let himself be led away. And the crew, the press, the flunkeys, the bodyguards, the gallery underlings and their director surged behind him, and within seconds the Perownes were standing in the empty gallery with the bricks as if nothing had happened at all.
Watching from his car the multiple images cutting between interviewer and guest, Perowne wonders if such moments, stabs of cold panicky doubt, are an increasing part of the Prime Minister's days, or nights. There might not be a second UN resolution. The next weapons inspectors' report could also be inconclusive. The Iraqis might use biological weapons against the invasion force. Or, as one former inspector keeps insisting, there might no longer be any weapons of mass destruction at all. There's talk of famine and three million refugees, and they're already preparing the reception camps in Syria and Iran. The UN is predicting hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths. There could be revenge attacks on London. And still the Americans remain vague about their post-war plans. Perhaps they have none. In all, Saddam could be overthrown at too high a cost. It's a future no one can read. Government ministers speak up loyally, various newspapers back the war, there's a fair degree of anxious support in the country along with the dissent, but no one really doubts that in Britain one man alone is driving the matter forward. Night sweats, hideous dreams, the wild, lurching fantasies of sleeplessness? Or simple loneliness? Whenever he sees him now on screen, Henry looks out for an awareness of the abyss, for that hairline crack, the moment of facial immobility, the brief faltering he privately witnessed. But all he sees is certainty, or at worst a straining earnestness.
He finds a vacant residents' parking space across the road from his front door. As he takes the shopping from the boot of his car, he sees in the square, lounging by the bench nearest his house, the same young men who are often there in the early evening, and then again late at night. There are two West Indians and two, sometimes three Middle Easterners who might be Turks. All of them look genial and prosperous, and frequently lean on each other's shoulders and laugh loudly. At the kerb is a Mercedes, same model as Perowne's, but black, and a figure always at the wheel. Now and then a stranger will come by and stop to talk to the group. One of them will cross to the car, consult with the driver and return, there'll be another huddle, and then the stranger will walk on. They are entirely self-contained and unthreatening, and Perowne assumed for a long time they were dealers, running a pavement café in cocaine perhaps, or ecstasy and marijuana. Their customers do not look haunted or degenerate enough to be heroin or crack users. It was Theo who put his father right. The group sells tickets for various fringe rap gigs around the city. They also sell bootleg CDs and can arrange cheap long-distance flights as well as fix up cut-rate premises and DJs for parties, limos for weddings and airports, and cut-rate health and travel insurance; for a commission they can introduce asylum seekers and illegal aliens to solicitors. The group pays no taxes or office overheads and is highly competitive. Whenever Perowne sees these people he vaguely feels, as he does now, crossing the road to his door, that he owes them an apology. One day he'll buy something from them.
Theo is down in the kitchen, probably preparing one of his fruit and yoghurt breakfasts. Henry leaves the fish at the top of the stairs, calls down a greeting and goes up to the second floor. The bedroom feels overheated and confined, and depleted by daylight. It looks and feels a better, kinder place lit by dimmed lamps, with the day's work done and the promise of sleep; being here in the early afternoon reminds him of a bad spell of flu. He pulls off his trainers, peels away his damp socks and drops them in the laundry basket, and goes to the central window to open it. And there it is again, or another one, directly below him, slowly rounding the corner of the house where the street meets the square. His view is mostly of its roof, and his sightline to the offside wing mirror is entirely obscured, even though he pushes the window up and leans right out. Nor can he see the driver, or any passengers. He watches it cruise along the northern side of the square and turn right into Conway Street and disappear. This time he doesn't feel quite so detached. But what is he then? Interested, or even faintly troubled? It's a common enough make, and until two or three years ago, red was a common choice. On the other hand, why reason away the possibility of it being Baxter? His predicament is terrible and fascinating—the tough-guy street existence must have masked a longing for a better kind of life even before the degenerative disease showed its first signs. Perowne comes away from the window and goes towards the bathroom. Baxter would hardly need to tail him. The Mercedes is distinctive enough, and it's parked right outside the house. Yes, he'd like to see Baxter again, in office hours, and hear more and give him some useful contacts. But Henry doesn't want him hanging around the square.
As he finishes undressing, his mobile rings from within the heap of clothes he's let fall at his feet. He fumbles and finds it.
“Darling?” she says.
Rosalind at last. What better moment? He takes the phone through to the bedroom and sprawls naked on his back on the half-made bed where hours before they made love. From the radiators he feels on his bare skin waves of heat like a desert breeze. The thermostat is set too high. He has a half, or perhaps really a quarter of an erection. If she hadn't been working today, if there were no weekend crisis on the paper, if her mild-mannered editor wasn't such a bruiser when it comes to the small print of press freedom, she and Henry might be here together now. It's how they sometimes pass an hour or two on a winter's Saturday afternoon. The sexiness of a four o'clock dusk.
The bathroom mirror, with the help of kindly illumination and a correct angle, allows Henry an occasional reminder of his youth. But Rosalind, by some trick of inner light or his own loving folly, still appears to resemble strongly, constantly, the woman he first knew all those years ago. The older sister of that young Rosalind, but not yet her mother. How long can this last? In their essentials, the individual elements remain unchanged: the near luminous pallor of her skin—her mother, Marianne, was of Celtic descent; the scant, delicate eyebrows—almost non-existent; that level, soft green regard; and her teeth, white as ever (his own are going grey), the upper set perfectly shaped, the lower, faintly awry—a girlish imperfection he's never wanted her to remedy; the way the unfeigned breadth of the smile proceeds from a shy start; on her lips, an orange-rose gleam that is all her own; the hair, cut short now, still reddish-brown. In repose she has an air of merry intelligence, an undiminished taste for fun. It remains a beautiful face. Like everyone in their forties, she has her moments of dismay, weary before the mirror at bedtime, and he's recognised in himself that look, almost a snarl, of savage appraisal. We're all travelling in the same direction. Reasonably, she's not entirely convinced when he tells her that the soft swelling at her hips is rather to his taste, as is the heaviness in her breasts. But it's true. Yes,
he would be happy lying down with her now.
He guesses that her state of mind will be remote from his own—in her black office clothes, hurrying in and out of meetings—so he pulls himself up into a sitting position on the bed to talk sensibly.
“How's it going?”
“Our judge is stuck in a traffic jam south of Blackfriars Bridge. It's the demonstration. But I think he's going to give us what we want.”
“Lift the injunction?”
“Yup. Monday morning.” She sounds speedy and pleased.
“You're a genius,” Henry says. “What about your dad?”
“I can't collect him from his hotel. It's the demonstration. The traffic's hell. He's going to make his own way in a taxi.” She pauses and says at a slightly slower pace, “And how are you?” The downward inflection and extension of the final word is tender, a clear reference to this morning. He was wrong about her mood. He's about to tell her that he's naked on the bed, wanting her, then he changes his mind. This isn't the time for telephone foreplay, when he has to get out of the house and she has her own business to conclude. And there are more important things he's yet to tell her which will have to wait until after tonight's dinner, or tomorrow morning.
He says, “I'm heading off to Perivale as soon as I've had a shower.” And because that isn't the answer to her question, he adds, “I'm all right, but I'm looking forward to some time with you.” That isn't enough either, so he says, “Various things've happened I need to talk to you about.”
“What sort of things?”
“Nothing terrible. I'd rather tell you when I see you.”
“OK. But give me a clue.”
“Last night when I couldn't sleep I was at the window. I saw that Russian cargo plane.”
“Darling. That must have been scary. What else?”
He hesitates, and his hand, by its own volition, caresses the area around the bruise on his chest. What would be the heading, as she sometimes puts it? Road-rage showdown. Attempted mugging. A neural disease. The wing mirror. The rear-view mirror.
“I lost at squash. I'm getting too old for this game.”
She laughs. “I don't believe that's what it is.” But she sounds reassured. She says, “There's something you may have forgotten. Theo's got a big rehearsal this afternoon. A few days ago I heard you promising to be there.”
“Damn. What time?” He has no memory of such a promise.
“At five in that place in Ladbroke Grove.”
“I better move.”
He rises from the bed and takes the phone into the bathroom for the farewells.
“I love you.”
“I love you,” she answers, and rings off.
He steps under the shower, a forceful cascade pumped down from the third floor. When this civilisation falls, when the Romans, whoever they are this time round, have finally left and the new dark ages begin, this will be one of the first luxuries to go. The old folk crouching by their peat fires will tell their disbelieving grandchildren of standing naked mid-winter under jet streams of hot clean water, of lozenges of scented soaps and of viscous amber and vermilion liquids they rubbed into their hair to make it glossy and more voluminous than it really was, and of thick white towels as big as togas, waiting on warming racks.
He wears a suit and tie five days a week. Today he's wearing jeans, sweater and scuffed brown boots, and who's to know that he himself is not the great guitarist of his generation? As he bends to tie his laces, he feels a sharp pain in his knees. It's pointless holding out until he's fifty. He'll give himself six more months of squash and one last London Marathon. Will he be able to bear it, having these pastimes only in his past? At the mirror he's lavish with his aftershave—in winter especially, there's sometimes a scent in the air at the old people's home that he prefers to counteract.
He steps out of the bedroom and then, sideways on, skips down the first run of stairs two at a time, without holding the banister for safety. It's a trick he learned in adolescence, and he can do it better than ever. But a skidding boot heel, a shattered coccyx, six months on his back in bed, a year rebuilding his wasted muscles—the premonitory fantasy fills less than half a second, and it works. He takes the next flight in the ordinary way.
In the basement kitchen Theo has already taken the fish and stowed it in the fridge. The tiny TV is on with muted sound, and shows a helicopter's view of Hyde Park. The massed crowds appear as a smear of brown, like lichen on a rock. Theo has constructed his breakfast in a large salad bowl which contains close to a kilo of oatmeal, bran, nuts, blueberries, loganberries, raisins, milk, yoghurt, chopped dates, apple and bananas.
Theo nods at it. “Want some?”
“I'll eat leftovers.”
Henry takes a plate of chicken and boiled potatoes from the fridge and eats standing up. His son sits on a high stool at the centre island, hunched over his giant bowl. Beyond the debris of crumbs, wrappers and fruit skins are pages of music manuscript with chords written out in pencil. His shoulders are broad, and the bunched muscle stretches the fabric of his clean white T-shirt. The hair, the skin of his bare arms, the thick dark brown eyebrows still have the same rich, smooth newmade quality Perowne used to admire when Theo was four.
Perowne gestures towards the TV. “Still not tempted?”
“I've been watching. Two million people. Truly amazing.”
Naturally, Theo is against the war in Iraq. His attitude is as strong and pure as his bones and skin. So strong he doesn't feel much need to go tramping through the streets to make his point.
“What's the latest on that plane? I heard about the arrests.”
“No one's saying anything.” Theo tips more milk into his salad bowl. “But there are rumours on the Internet.”
“About the Koran.”
“The pilots are radical Islamists. One's a Chechen, the other's Algerian.”
Perowne pulls up a stool and as he sits feels his appetite fading. He pushes his plate aside.
“So how does it work? They set fire to their own plane in the cause of jihad, then land safely at Heathrow.”
“They bottled out.”
“So their idea was to sort of join in today's demonstration.”
“Yeah. They'd be making a point. Make war on an Arab nation and this is the kind of thing that's going to happen.”
It doesn't sound plausible. But in general, the human disposition is to believe. And when proved wrong, shift ground. Or have faith, and go on believing. Over time, down through the generations, this may have been the most efficient: just in case, believe. All day, Perowne himself has suspected the story was not all it seemed, and now Theo is feeding this longing his father has to hear the worst. On the other hand, if the rumours about the plane come from the Internet, the chances of their inaccuracy are increased.
Henry gives a condensed account of his scrape with Baxter and his friends and of the symptoms of Huntington's and the lucky escape.
Theo says, “You humiliated him. You should watch that.”
“Meaning what?”
“These street guys can be proud. Also, Dad, I can't believe we've lived here all this time and you and Mum have never been mugged.”
Perowne looks at his watch and stands. “Mum and I just don't have the time. I'll see you in Notting Hill around five.”
“You're coming. Excellent!”
It is part of Theo's charm, not to have pressed him. And if his father hadn't shown up, he wouldn't have mentioned it.
“Start without me. You know what it's like, getting from Granny's.”
“We'll be doing the new song. Chas'll be there. We'll keep it till you arrive.”
Chas is his favourite among Theo's friends, and the most educated too, dropping out of an English degree in his third year at Leeds to play in a band. A wonder that life so far—suicidal mother, absent father, two brothers, members of a strict Baptist sect—hasn't crushed all that relaxed good nature out of him. Something about the name of St. Kitts—saints, kids, kittens—has
produced a profusion of kindness in one giant lad. Since meeting him, Perowne has developed a vague ambition to visit the island.
From a corner of the room he picks up a potted plant wrapped in tissue, an expensive orchid he bought a few days ago in the florist's by Heal's. He stops at the doorway and raises a hand in farewell. “I'm cooking tonight. Don't forget to straighten out the kitchen.”
“Yeah.” Then Theo adds without irony, “Remember me to Granny. Give her my love.”
Clean and scented, with a dull, near-pleasurable ache in his limbs, driving west in light traffic, Perowne finds he's feeling better about seeing his mother. He knows the routine well enough. Once they're established together, face to face, with their cups of dark brown tea, the tragedy of her situation will be obscured behind the banality of detail, of managing the suffocating minutes, of inattentive listening. Being with her isn't so difficult. The hard part is when he comes away, before this visit merges in memory with all the rest, when the woman she once was haunts him as he stands by the front door and leans down to kiss her goodbye. That's when he feels he's betraying her, leaving her behind in her shrunken life, sneaking away to the riches, the secret hoard of his own existence. Despite the guilt, he can't deny the little lift he feels, the lightness in his step when he turns his back and walks away from the old people's place and takes his car keys from his pocket and embraces the freedoms that can't be hers. Everything she has now fits into her tiny room. And she hardly possesses the room because she's incapable of finding it unaided, or even of knowing that she has one. And when she is in it, she doesn't recognise her things. It's no longer possible to bring her to the Square to stay, or take her on excursions; a small journey disorients or even terrifies her. She has to remain behind, and naturally she doesn't understand that either.
But the thought of the leave-taking ahead doesn't trouble him now. He's at last suffused by the mild euphoria that follows exercise. That blessed self-made opiate, beta-endorphin, smothering every kind of pain. There's a merry Scarlatti harpsichord on the radio tinkling through a progression of chords that never quite resolves, and seems to lead him on towards a playfully receding destination. In the rear-view mirror, no red BMW. Along this stretch, where the Euston becomes the Marylebone Road, the traffic signals are phased, Manhattan-style, and he's wafted forwards on a leading edge of green lights, a surfer on a perfect wave of simple information: go! Or even, yes! The long line of tourists—teenagers mostly—outside Madame Tussaud's seems less futile than usual; a generation raised on thunderous Hollywood effects still longs to stand and gawp at waxworks, like eighteenth-century peasants at a country fair. The reviled Westway, rearing on stained concrete piles and on which he rises swiftly to second-floor level, offers up a sudden horizon of tumbling cloud above a tumult of rooftops. It's one of those moments when to be a car owner in a city, the owner of this car, is sweet. For the first time in weeks, he's in fourth gear. Perhaps he'll make fifth. A sign on a gantry above the traffic lanes proclaims The West, The North, as though there lies, spread beyond the suburbs, a whole continent, and the promise of a six-day journey.
