by James Meek
‘You don’t like it when people are inconsistent, do you? That’s why you’re stuck in the middle of the middle class. You want to iron out all the peaks and troughs and flatten everyone to your level.’
‘Kids,’ said Cunnery.
Melissa ignored him. ‘It just breaks you up, doesn’t it, that I’m here at Liam Cunnery’s table and I’m enjoying myself. You can’t bear it that I get on with working-class poets like Pat, and men’s men like Joe, and Marxists like Margot and Liam, and rich toffs like my fiancé’s family. Character transcends class, Adam. The only people I can’t tolerate are chippy, sanctimonious, bourgeois compy boys like you.’
‘Kids!’ said Cunnery, raising his voice and his hands. ‘Please.’
‘There’s more venison, if anybody would like some,’ said Margot.
Smiling broadly, Melissa got up and left the room towards the stairs, passing Kellas. As she passed, Kellas said, without turning round: ‘Bring your fucking demons to my door. I’ll wrestle them all.’ Melissa didn’t speak and they heard her feet going upstairs.
Kellas glanced at M’Gurgan and Lucy. Now Lucy was talking quietly to Pat while he ate, looking down at his food.
‘I do wonder,’ said Kellas to Cunnery. Cunnery raised his eyebrows. ‘About you having Melissa here. And Joe.’
‘They’re friends. It’s—’
‘Yeah, I know. I know. Only what it is – it makes me think about being a young reporter in magistrates’ courts. There’s the guy in the dock, the accused, with his hands behind his back, flexing his knees, with the scars on his cheek and the tattoos on his neck, looking straight ahead. And in front of him there’s two lawyers. There’s his guy, the lawyer who’s supposed to be defending him. And there’s the Crown Prosecution Service guy, the one who wants to have him banged up, wants to see he doesn’t get bail. They’re supposed to be on two opposite sides. One of them’s on his side, and the other is his enemy. And they’re all standing there, waiting for the magistrates to come in. And the guy in the dock sees the two lawyers, the one who’s against him and the one who’s for him, talking to each other. He sees they know each other pretty well. Then he sees they’re making jokes. They’re laughing. They’re friends. They don’t mean anything they say to the magistrates when they ask for bail or for bail to be refused. They don’t give a fuck about whether he gets bail or not. They don’t care about him. It’s only a game.’
‘You’re not in the dock, Adam,’ said Cunnery.
‘It’s your readers. They read you in Left Side and they read Melissa in the Express, or at least they’ve heard about her, and it sounds as if you really believe, as if it matters, as if there must be some outcome. A struggle between right and wrong, good and evil, and you’re on different sides. They don’t know you’re sitting down to dinner together at your table. As if it’s a game. Two teams in the same club.’
‘You went out with her, didn’t you? You shared a bed?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you don’t agree with what she writes?’
‘It’s foul.’
‘So who’s the hypocrite?’
Kellas blushed. ‘I couldn’t help it. The right-wing ones are so dirty.’ Melissa came back into the room and sat down, not looking in Kellas’s direction. Sophie leaned across Kellas and asked Cunnery about Tara’s school. Kellas looked at Lucy and M’Gurgan. Both were sitting without saying anything now, looking down at their plates while they lifted food to their mouths, like an old couple in a restaurant who had no more to say to each other. Kellas was about to ask Lucy about her work when he realised that Lucy and M’Gurgan’s silence was single, shared silence, a shaking, dangerous one. Lucy put down her knife and fork quite suddenly as if she had remembered something and asked Cunnery where the bathroom was. She was a little out of breath. He said there was one on the first floor, but could she use the one at the top of the house instead so as not to wake Tara. Lucy went out and after a moment M’Gurgan got a text message to call his agent and apologised and went out into the garden.
Kellas declared a wish to switch to white wine, and said he could go to the kitchen to look for a clean glass. He said hello to the helper as he passed her. She was cleaning up. She didn’t say anything back. Kellas went into the porch. He could just see M’Gurgan climbing the fire escape to the first floor. Kellas went back to the dining room, walked past the table and out and began climbing the stairs. When he got to the first-floor landing he stopped and listened. He heard what could have been a plastic cup of toothbrushes falling over and M’Gurgan snorting and giggling. He heard feet on a creaking floor. Tara’s bedroom doorway lay dark and open a couple of yards away. There was an alien smell of other people’s cleaning products. Kellas climbed the last flight of stairs to the top of the house. All the doors were open except one. Trying to move quietly, he walked towards it. He heard a tiny sound, which could have been a sound Lucy made at M’Gurgan kissing her while he touched her. Then he heard Lucy say, in a slow murmur: ‘Your wife could be listening at the door right now.’
‘Look at me,’ came M’Gurgan’s voice. ‘Just put your hand there. D’you like that?’
‘Hate it,’ said Lucy and laughed.
‘You’re not wanting me to stop, are you?’
Lucy drew in breath. ‘No.’
‘Did you grow up in the country?’
‘In Hampshire. Oh. Mm. Why?’
‘I was thinking about what the lassie says in a bit of Burns.’ They were both speaking very quietly.
Something made Lucy gasp and she said: ‘It’s a bit late for poetry now.’
‘It’s where the lassie says nine inch will please a lady. And then she says: “But for a koontrie cunt like mine, in sooth, we’re nae sae gentle; We’ll tak tway thumb-bread to the nine, and that’s a sonsy pintle.”’
Kellas walked away from the bathroom door, went downstairs and used the bathroom there. When he came out, Tara was standing in front of him, blinking in her nightie.
‘I’m sorry. I woke you up,’ he said.
‘It wasn’t you,’ said Tara grumpily. ‘It was that lady screaming upstairs.’
‘Oh, really? I didn’t hear anything.’
‘There was a lady and she screamed. Did you like my piano playing?’
‘Yes, it was lovely.’
‘Melissa thinks I should have my own band.’
‘How old are you again?’
‘I’m ten.’
‘All you need is to practise more.’
Tara’s face folded into itself like paper and she let loose an unfettered wail.
‘You see?’ said Kellas, squatting down and putting his hands on her shoulders. ‘You see what happens when people tell the truth? It’s nasty medicine. Come on.’ He stood up and took her hand. ‘Let’s go downstairs. All the grown-ups are telling the truth down there and I feel just like you.’ He heard the bathroom door open upstairs and he led the weeping Tara away and down.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said when they reached the basement. ‘Lucy was in the bathroom at the top and I had to go.’ Tara ran down the table into the arms of Margot. Kellas sat down just as Lucy came in.
‘He said he hated my piano playing!’ wailed Tara.
‘Not in so many words,’ said Kellas. ‘I’m really sorry I woke her up.’
‘It wasn’t him! It was the lady screaming upstairs.’
Sophie looked at Kellas, and at Lucy, who seemed confused and out of breath, and not so pale as she had been. Sophie leaned close to Adam and whispered: ‘You could at least have come back a few minutes apart.’
‘I’ll take her, darling,’ called Cunnery to Margot. ‘You go and get the pudding.’
M’Gurgan came in from the garden and sat down.
‘Everything OK?’ said Sophie. ‘That was a long call.’
‘I thought he was quick,’ said Kellas.
‘Long enough for you,’ said Sophie. She looked angry.
‘Was he saying something about me?’ said Lucy to Sophie, nodding
at Kellas.
‘The agent was on about the film deal,’ said M’Gurgan.
‘Is there a film deal?’ said Kellas. Too many people were talking and some difficult, rare cocktail of emotions was shifting inside him. His soul was being driven down, into some deeper place than he had known of, while his body tingled and felt strong and light and cold.
‘Some Hollywood big-shot has optioned it, but you know how it is, it’ll probably never get made,’ said M’Gurgan.
‘It bothers me about you that you didn’t have the patience to take her home and do it there, out of a child’s earshot,’ whispered Sophie in Kellas’s ear.
‘Did you have to tell Tara what you thought about her piano playing?’ said Margot, as she laid a piece of chocolate cake in front of Kellas. ‘She’s only ten.’ She sounded tired, long-tired, as if she’d been acting not-tired all evening and had just given up.
‘What did you say to her about me?’ said Lucy to Kellas. She was trembling slightly. Perhaps she was about to cry.
‘Nothing,’ said Kellas. M’Gurgan was excavating forkfuls of cake and shovelling them into his mouth.
Melissa came down the table, leading Tara by the hand. Tara climbed onto Cunnery’s lap and curled up there. He put his arms round her. Melissa looked at Kellas, opened and closed her mouth, shook her head and said: ‘God forbid that you should ever have children.’
Kellas looked down the table at Betchcott. Betchcott stared back, grinning. It occurred to Kellas that he hadn’t seen Betchcott smile until now. Betchcott wasn’t grinning at him, but grinning with him. You are just like me. Kellas put down his hand to pick up a spoon. A curious thing happened. Both his hands acted, and instead of lifting the spoon, they lifted the plate with the cake. Only by a couple of inches, before he put it down and rested his fists on the table. His senses dimmed and he began to follow a willed sort of dream where he got up and walked through the house and, in a small far room, came across Astrid, working, and she turned from her work and looked at him and smiled.
Kellas was distracted by a voice. He realised Cunnery was talking to him, jigging Tara up and down on his lap, about whether America and Britain would invade Iraq, and what would happen if they did. He talked about oil, and imperialism, and Israel, and how cruelly Britain had behaved when it was master in Mesopotamia. He talked with confidence, knowledge and accuracy about the history of the region. After a while, when Kellas didn’t say anything, Cunnery asked Kellas what he thought.
Kellas shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘Oh, come on,’ said Cunnery. ‘You’re a reporter. You were in Afghanistan. You must have an opinion.’
‘I’m trying not to have opinions,’ said Kellas. ‘It gets in the way of the “is” of the “is”.’
‘The what?’
‘The “is” of the “is”. As in “Something real is happening and I am not doing anything real about it.”’
‘You mean the truth?’
‘That’s not what I said.’ Kellas was listening to his own voice. It had developed a tone he didn’t like. ‘You care about the Iraqis, don’t you? And the Palestinians, and the Afghans, and all the rest? You’ve got Arab friends, at least that’s what you call them when you write about them in your magazine. You don’t want the Americans and the Brits and the Israelis to drop bombs on them. That’s good. It makes you a good man. It shows you care.’
‘I don’t know about good, but there’s nothing wrong with caring, is there? I’m not sure what you’re saying. Are you saying you’re in favour of dropping bombs on people?’
‘I might as well be,’ said Kellas. ‘I pay my taxes. I went to a press conference with the prime minister a few months ago and I didn’t lunge at him and try to kick him in the face.’
‘Nobody expects you to do that.’
‘That’s because the price of caring is set so low. You just have to say you care and you’ve paid. You don’t have to give anything up.’
‘I give a voice to people who do. In the magazine. On the Internet.’
‘But it’s you. It’s you. You can talk as radical as you like here on the island and you can live such a, such a comfortable life and people’ll still call you a Marxist. When you’re so safe. Your house is safe, your money is safe, your family is safe. Your reputation is safe, and so’s your sanity. Your British passport’s safe. Even your spare time is safe. How can you write about so many jeopardised people so self-importantly when you’re so unjeopardised yourself? When did it happen that people who stand up for the losers began to be so afraid of losing anything at all? You hung out with the Sandinistas for a while but you never were one. You came home. You don’t speak Arabic. You don’t live in Baghdad. You’ve never lived underground. You’ve never tried to live as an honest, secular, left-wing, property-owning, intellectual journalist with a young daughter and a working feminist wife in an authoritarian Islamic country. You could, but you never have.’
Cunnery looked down at Tara, asleep in his lap. He stroked her hair. He raised his eyes to Kellas. His voice was cool. ‘Is this what you learned in Afghanistan?’ he said.
‘I didn’t learn anything in Afghanistan. I made an office there.’
‘I suppose it is difficult,’ said Cunnery slowly, ‘to know, really know, what it’s like for them. For people like the Afghans. I mean, those pieces you wrote for me from there – they weren’t able to convey the reality, were they? Perhaps it’s impossible to know.’
‘You’re wrong. It’s very simple. But I don’t think you want to know. That’s what I’ve been saying.’ Kellas’s heart was beating very hard and he was having some trouble breathing regularly.
‘No, I do want to know.’
‘Are you sure? What it’s like?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK.’ Kellas stood up, pushing his chair back. The people in the room were very indistinct. He could see that they were different from each other but there was a shimmer to them that made it hard to look at them directly. The objects, the furnishings in the room were clearer. Their position, and their destructibility. First, his plate. He picked it up, raised it to shoulder level and dropped it onto the slate floor, where it broke into several pieces, which went skittering over the tiles. He grabbed the plates in front of Sophie and Cunnery, put them together, and hurled them onto the floor, harder this time. The wineglasses! They went with a sweep of his forearm and in what must have been a very short time his feet stood in the kind of crunchiness that occurs after an explosion or an accident. The people around him were engaged in forms of recoiling and retreating, but their voices were beginning to be loud. Kellas took the vase off the mantelpiece, threw the flowers away and smashed it on the fireplace. One of the fragments somehow ricocheted off the floor and stroked his left arm. It was a comforting feeling, but it may have caused him to bleed. The sound of breaking glass and crockery encouraged him but there was a part of him which was embarrassed that he couldn’t think of anything to say while he was doing so much damage. He shoved the rest of the tat off the mantelpiece, noting that the glass on the family group picture fractured but didn’t break, then yanked the nearest of Margot’s photographs off the wall and brought it down with a crack on the edge of the table. It would have broken in half, but the frame only bent. He felt hands pawing at him and it was becoming impossible to ignore the fact that his name was being shouted. Blood on the floor. For an instant he hesitated, having run out of proximate objects to destroy. Was he really so weak, and these two-hundred-year-old walls so strong, that he couldn’t kick them through like plasterboard or dried mud? He drew in breath and heaved at the edge of the table. Now he was finding a voice of his own. With a roar and a stabbing sensation in all his muscles he pushed the table over, sending the remaining glass and crockery to its doom. He pulled at and smashed one more of Margot’s pictures. In front of him, a face acquired definite lines and sounds. A small child was bawling. He wanted to say something, something temperate and measured, but when he formed the words the only
register he found was shrill.
‘THAT’S WHAT IT’S LIKE!’ he shrieked into Tara’s face. Everyone was shouting, except the helper, who had come out from the kitchen to watch. She was looking at Kellas with her mouth set. He walked away, ran up the stairs, grabbed Lenin, left the house and lobbed the Great Leader through the Cunnerys’ front window. After the windowglass had lain down in pieces, its own curt chimes complete, Kellas could hear the faint sound of a child sobbing from inside the house. He looked down at his wrist. His sleeve was sticky with blood. He started running down the street. On the corner, he passed a pillar box. He stopped and took out his wallet. There were first class stamps in there, and a receipt for a bookcase. He found a pen in his pocket, squatted down, smoothed the blank side of the receipt onto his thigh and wrote: ‘Dear Sophie, it was Pat who had sex with Lucy at the Cunnerys’ house. He went up the fire escape. Regards, Adam.’ He folded the receipt in half, stuck the halves shut with a stamp, put another stamp on the front, squeezed Sophie’s name and the M’Gurgan address on between the printed characters, and posted the piece of paper into the dark mouth of the box. Then he ran again, and vanished like a stone into the deep well of London’s night.
6
The sound of cutlery delicately touching glazed pottery woke Kellas. Elizabeth was cutting a steak into small pieces. She put her knife and fork down, picked up a spear of asparagus, dipped it in hollandaise sauce and bit off the end. She looked at Kellas.
‘You just closed your eyes and stopped,’ she said, chewing while she spoke. She put the rest of the asparagus spear into her mouth. ‘Like somebody cut your strings.’
Kellas’s table had been set with a wineglass, a folded linen napkin, a menu and a pink flower in a thumb-sized vase. In this class the table was twice the size and swivelled to one side. He looked out of the window. Seven miles below, a mosaic of ice lay on the ocean like congealed fat on last night’s stew. He turned to ask Elizabeth what time it was. The screen she had swung out from her armrest showed the paused image of Spiderman
