A Very Persistent Illusion

by L. C. Tyler

  ‘And tell Mummy if you want to,’ sneers the odds-on favourite, expertly pre-empting any appeal to higher authority.

  Game over, frankly. I am all for getting away from the scene of the crime before we might have to intervene like grown-ups, but Virginia is made of sterner stuff. ‘Is that a nice thing to say?’ she demands of the larger child.

  ‘Yes,’ he says after only the shortest consideration. He looks Virginia in the eye and then belches loudly – possibly a newly acquired skill. So much for grown-up intervention, then. He sprints away towards a distant family group, but not before lashing out with a toe and collapsing another tower into a heap of dry sand. Only the flapping red paper flag, now sticking out at forty-five degrees, gives a clue to its former glory. Time to go.

  Virginia is on her knees beside the younger one in seconds. ‘It’s a lovely castle,’ she says quickly. ‘Did it take you a long time to build it?’

  The child nods. He is not sure whether to cry, but if he does cry he’s going to cry a lot. I remain very much in favour of moving on. Virginia puts an arm round his goose-pimpled shoulder.

  ‘Can I help?’ she asks. ‘Can we make that tower again?’

  The child nods again and sniffs, sucking back in an amber gobbet of snot that was attempting to escape from his nose. ‘Handkerchief!’ I want to yell at him, but he is already absorbed, patting away at a little mound of sand, while Virginia, kneeling in her favourite, dry-clean-only silk dress, fills one of the two buckets.

  ‘Are you somebody’s mummy?’ he asks after a while, rubbing a layer of sand over the remaining snot.

  ‘Not yet,’ says Virginia, expertly patting out a tower and replanting the flag.

  ‘Is he somebody’s daddy?’

  ‘Not as far as he knows,’ says Virginia.

  ‘He looks like a daddy.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ asks Virginia thoughtfully. ‘I’ve sometimes wondered whether he could be turned into one.’

  ‘He’s got daddy hair,’ says the child.

  Meaning what exactly?

  ‘Hmmm,’ says Virginia, nodding.

  Meaning what exactly?

  I look towards the distant family group in the hope of seeing a parent striding our way, anxious to protect their child from the attention of dubious strangers. Nothing doing, unfortunately. It’s just the three of us.

  ‘Do you like making sandcastles?’ asks the child, moving the conversation to a more interesting topic.

  ‘Everyone likes making sandcastles,’ says Virginia. ‘Daddies like it most of all. Why don’t we dig a moat here and then send Chris down to the sea with one of the buckets? We can make him run up and down the beach for us, carrying water. We can see if he is genuine daddy material. That would be funny, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘Yes,’ says the child, cheering up, ‘that would be very funny.’ His grubby face looks up at me and his eyes meet mine with a steely, pale-blue gaze. He offers me the bright yellow bucket.

  ‘Run, Daddy,’ he says. ‘Run.’

  * * *

  Sunday and it’s raining. Virginia is at her work thing. I could check my emails. Equally, I think, as I switch my computer on, I could play Championship Manager for just a bit. I insert the CD-ROM and the game starts to run.

  Championship Manager is not the most sophisticated computer game on the market, having been around a few years, but I like it. You get to manage a football team, you buy and sell players, you pick a team, work out tactics, hit the return key and wait for the computer to play the next match. It’s a bit like following a real game on the BBC Sport website – you get updates on progress: the free kicks, the fouls, the cards, the GOALS. Then – and this is the bit that fascinates me – as your game ends, the computer gives you the results of all of the other matches that were being played that day. Somewhere, unknown to you, it has been running through match after match for all of the other teams – teams your team will never play and whose players you will never buy – and evaluating them, working out what the score should be. A whole invisible world of football is going on.

  I call up a saved game that I’ve been playing for some time. We’re several seasons ahead of real life. I am managing (Dave’s) Southend United, in the hope of taking them up into the Premiership and onwards to the Champions’ League. Unfortunately, as in real life, they have been relegated to the lower reaches of the football world.

  It hurts. I almost got them into the Premiership a couple of seasons back, but missed the play-offs by one lousy point. My stupid computerized players screwed it up and, like remembering what you were doing when you heard about Kennedy being shot or whatever, I can recall every bit of the surrounding detail. There had been an earthquake somewhere like Pakistan, and Virginia had phoned me up just to ask whether I’d heard and to tell me how terrible it was that so many children had died. But all I could think was that I’d just missed promotion by one lousy point. Not having lost all grip on reality, I realized that I would be ill-advised to try to share my pain with Virginia, who might think that these children – whom I’d never seen and who I never knew existed before that day – were in some way more important than a computer game. But I can still remember the name of the player who scored the vital own goal (I sold him straight away) whereas I can’t remember for certain if the earthquake was in Pakistan or some other place entirely.

  Outside, the rain is now coming down in a steady stream but the computer tells me that it’s fine and pitch conditions are good for the next match. I’m not planning to go out this morning. So which weather is more real? Eh?

  * * *

  I dodge quickly out of Great Portland Street station, but in the fairly safe knowledge that none of my staff will be abroad at this hour. It is still eight thirty and I need to catch Humph, who was away again most of last week, to discuss two matters of great importance before the Society office gets too busy.

  Humph is already at his desk as expected. Possibly he really does have no home to go to. Today there are dark rings under his eyes and he looks not so much tired as ill – ‘gaunt’ would describe it best, but ‘ashen’ isn’t a bad description either. The shirt, however, is crisp and white and the suit is soft and blue, and his shoes shine brightly, so all is not lost. He also retains his slightly patrician air. The President told me a story about Humph last week. He’d proposed that Humph’s title should be changed from Secretary to Chief Executive, and thought Humph might be pleased. Humph had pondered this for no more than a second before replying: ‘Secretary is an old and honourable title. Royal societies such as ours have had Secretaries since the seventeenth century at least. I would not recommend precipitous change.’ The President, who is not that tall, had drawn himself up to his full height to imitate Humph delivering this final rebuke. ‘I would not,’ he repeated with a frown, ‘recommend precipitous change.’ Classic Humph, really.

  ‘Have you got a couple of minutes?’ I ask Humph.

  He waves a hand noncommittally, inviting me over the threshold and into his office, but he does not ask me to sit. ‘Chris,’ he once said to me, ‘remember this: if you don’t want somebody to stay, don’t ask then to sit.’ Actually, he’s said it several times. I can’t stand it when people keep repeating the same old lines over and over.

  ‘I put George Magwitch in touch with a journalist,’ I say.

  ‘Somebody dull? Somebody reliable?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Then pray do not tell me who it is. I know as much as is good for me.’

  ‘Do you? Right. If you say so. One other thing, though.’

  ‘Yes?’ Humph rubs his eyes, but the dark rings aren’t going to go away that easily.

  ‘When are you going to advertise the Deputy post?’ I ask.

  ‘Ah,’ he says, glumly. ‘Perhaps you’d better sit down.’

  I sit, wondering what is in store. He’s about to do more than just give me a date for my diary. He’s going to give me bad news. Somebody has just whipped my stomac
h out and replaced it with a lump of cold jelly. I hate it when they do that.

  ‘We’re going to offer the post to Brindley,’ he says.

  ‘Poxy Passmore? Just like that? No advert? No interviews?’

  ‘Yes, just like that,’ he says.

  ‘Can you do that? Is it legal? Can I appeal?’

  ‘I’ve done it. You can appeal if you like, but I wouldn’t. You don’t want the job, Chris.’

  ‘Don’t I?’ This is news to me.

  ‘The Deputy post ain’t worth a pitcher of warm piss,’ he drawls in an American accent. It’s another one of his quotes, and I’m expected to recognize it, which maybe I do, but I’m not going to give him the satisfaction. He raises a mildly disappointed eyebrow at my lack of reaction, then continues: ‘We decided not to advertise it because it’s only Brindley’s current job with a new fancy title – managing the accounts, the building, IT, HR, catering. OK, it’s bit more than that – he takes over Membership Department and CPD – and he will deputize for me if I’m on leave – or sick – but it’s all the boring bits of the Society, when it comes down to it. You can do better than that.’

  ‘Can I?’ I hope he catches the note of irony, which is definitely there. I think I’d be pretty good managing HR, actually. Maybe not IT.

  ‘Look, Chris, nobody knows this yet, but I’m likely to retire a year or two earlier than I had planned.’

  ‘Why?’

  Humph waves a hand limply. ‘I’ll tell all of you in good time.’

  I look again at the grey face, the bags under the eyes. I’m glad I don’t look like that. What am I supposed to say? How long have you got to live?

  ‘How . . . soon are you planning to leave?’ is what I find I’ve actually said.

  ‘Later this year,’ says Humph. ‘I don’t know exactly. But when I do go I want you to apply for my job.’

  ‘Me?’ I say.

  ‘Don’t sound so surprised. You’ve been here a while. Anyway, it’s time you took on some serious responsibility.’

  ‘I thought I had a responsible job.’

  ‘Very. For somebody in their mid-twenties. How old are you?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ I ask.

  ‘You try to dress as if you were still a nineteen-year-old student.’

  I check out what I am wearing – new leather jacket, pure white Ralph Lauren Purple Label T-shirt, pristine Levi’s, Tod’s loafers. Student? I somehow doubt that a student could afford this jacket.

  ‘What’s wrong with the way I dress?’

  ‘Nothing at all, if you don’t want people to take you seriously. Socks would be a good start.’

  Well, I don’t want to dress like you either, I think. At least I look vaguely as if I belong to the twenty-first century.

  ‘And then there are the new terms of reference for the Ethics and Rights Committee,’ says Humph wearily.

  ‘You’ve read them?’

  ‘Why did you include a requirement that all committee members should have beards?’

  ‘Did I leave that in? It was only a joke. I thought I’d deleted it.’

  ‘No, you didn’t, though I now have. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t have fun, Chris, but you clearly can’t be bothered to check things and you don’t seem to realize that your humour is sometimes badly misplaced.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You’re a grown-up now, Chris,’ Humph continues. ‘You have reached the age of reason, as somebody once described it.’

  Another quote I am supposed to recognize, clearly. Shall I tell him I know it’s Sartre? No, I can’t be arsed.

  ‘Chris,’ says Humph, ‘what is your problem?’

  ‘I’ll get a suit,’ I say.

  ‘You know that’s not what I mean,’ says Humph.

  ‘It’s a start, though, isn’t it?’ I say.

  He stands up. The interview is over. Depart in peace.

  I close his door as I leave. I figure he can do with a bit of quiet.

  So there you are. Humph’s dying. I’m going to get his job. And it’s still only eight forty-five on Monday morning. It could be quite a week.

  * * *

  ‘OK, boys and girls, let’s kick the week off,’ I say.

  The ‘Team’ are sitting round in a circle, giving me their full attention. Narinder is leaning forward in his chair, black, slightly greasy hair flopping into his eyes, looking keen and alert. Jon is (conversely) leaning back, hands behind his head, his face showing no more than mild curiosity. Fatima is frowning and fiddling with a notebook, which refuses to sit flat on her lap. Lucy is wearing another tight sweater – pale blue cashmere today – and a very short black skirt. She smiles at me. I smile back. It’s a shame that the one big piece of news I’ve had today is something I can’t tell them.

  ‘I’m going to be sending you an email on annual leave allocations later today . . .’ I begin.

  ‘You sent us half an email on Friday,’ says Jon with a grin.

  ‘I think you pressed SEND when you meant to press SAVE,’ says Narinder earnestly.

  ‘Whatever,’ I say. ‘These things happen. I’ll finish it and send it again. OK, Jon, tell us just how dull the next five days are going to be for you.’

  Jon stretches and straightens, and then he says: ‘Things are back to normal now that I no longer have Digby Spain chasing me. God, that man’s evil. Anyway, I managed to do a lot of work on the press database last week, and I should finish inputting this week, unless a real PR crisis hits us.’

  I am trying to work out whether Lucy can possibly be wearing a bra under that sweater and am just saying, ‘Thanks, Jon. Over to you, Narinder,’ when an alarm bell starts to ring deafeningly and I have to stop and interject: ‘Digby Spain?’

  ‘Yes, I told you last week,’ says Jon.

  ‘Remind me,’ I say.

  ‘I didn’t think you were listening,’ says Jon. He leans back in his chair again and grins. He is a very happy bunny all of a sudden.

  I am not. ‘Cut the crap, Jon. Just remind me.’

  ‘I told you that Mr Spain had been pestering me for information on our Professor Magwitch.’

  I’ve probably mentioned that I hate it when they do that cold-jelly-for-stomach exchange thing?

  ‘What was he after?’ I also hate it when they swap your tongue for one three sizes too big.

  ‘Don’t worry. I gave nothing away at all. I’d already been tipped off that he was a friend of Dan Smith’s lawyer. Now Smith’s been cleared, he’s gunning for Magwitch as the chief prosecution witness. Smith’s supporters claim Magwitch’s evidence was inaccurate, biased and unprofessional and they want him to – quote – suffer as Dan Smith had to suffer – unquote.’

  ‘A friend of Dan Smith’s lawyer?’ I say. This is not good news.

  ‘Apparently. Anyway, I spent a whole week fending Spain off, but it all went quiet after last Monday for some reason. He’s got no idea how to get hold of Magwitch, so there’s not a lot he can do.’ Jon folds his arms, pleased that he has handled this well, and that I, in his place, might have made a mess of it. What he doesn’t know, of course, is that I have made a mess of it anyway.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this?’ I demand.

  ‘I did. I told you all of it last Monday. You really weren’t listening, were you? I suspect your mind may have been elsewhere.’ His eyes move imperceptibly but significantly towards Lucy. Has anyone except me noticed? Jon smiles a relaxed smile. ‘Anyway, why worry? No harm done. Digby’s stuffed.’

  ‘Look,’ I say to the Team, trying not to let my voice switch from baritone to soprano, as it strangely wishes to do. ‘I’ve just realized that there’s something I need to sort out urgently. We’ll have to finish here.’

  Narinder looks hurt. ‘But, man, I’ve got lots to tell the team about my week.’

  ‘Save it,’ I say. ‘Surprise us next week.’

  Narinder exchanges a puzzled glance with Lucy. Jon is still grinning, even though he’s got no i
dea just how much he’s got to grin about, and Fatima is still trying to get her notebook flat. She looks up suddenly, because she too has not been fully attending up to this point. ‘So, do you want me to write up the minutes?’ she asks testily.

  ‘Let’s leave Chris to it,’ says Lucy, ushering them all out, like the school monitor she so recently might have been. If I had not been so concerned about other things I might have worried about the rather proprietorial manner she is developing towards me. But for the moment I scarcely register it. ‘Let me know if any of us can help,’ she adds as she closes the door.

  I immediately phone George Magwitch and he immediately answers.

  ‘Did you speak to Digby Spain?’ I demand, without any of the usual polite preliminaries, like ‘hello’. I hope he’ll say something reassuring like: ‘No, I was diagnosed with leprosy and decided not to bother,’ but he just grunts affirmatively. A picture of a happy pig flashes briefly in front of me: a pig who hasn’t yet heard about bacon slicers.

  ‘Yes, I phoned him straight away,’ says the temporarily happy pig. ‘We had a long chat. A very long chat.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And he’s gone away to talk to other people and write it up.’

  ‘Other people?’ I enquire nervously. ‘What type of other people?’

  ‘I didn’t think to ask. People who would back up my side of the story, I guess,’ says the Happy Pig.

  ‘And how was he generally?’ I ask, hoping that there may be some microscopic straw to clutch at.

  ‘In rude health, I would imagine. No coughs or sniffles over the phone anyway. I didn’t take a full medical history.’