A Spy by Nature (2001)

by Charles Cumming

  The truth here would prove interesting. Well, frankly, Fort, there’s a lot of sexual tension between your wife and me and we nearly had sex on Saturday night.

  ‘She talked about you a lot,’ I tell him.

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Then I talked about me a lot…’

  ‘No change there, then.’

  ‘And finally we went to bed. I slept on the sofa.’

  ‘You stayed the night on the couch? Kathy never said.’

  Interesting.

  ‘Didn’t she?’

  ‘No.’

  An awkward pause hovers over us. The builder turns the page of his newspaper and it crackles in the silence.

  ‘Why do we always drink here?’ I ask Fortner, turning back to face him and lighting a cigarette from my packet on the counter. ‘Why do you like it?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘No, it’s great. It’s just that we haven’t varied the venue.’

  ‘Consistency is a much undervalued asset in modern times, my friend. Best to get to know a place. And besides, there’s good-lookin’ women later on.’

  The builder vibrates slightly on his stool. Something about this unnerves him.

  Fortner takes another long draw of Guinness. ‘So how are things?’ he asks. ‘Everything OK at Abnex?’

  ‘Good, actually. Alan’s on holiday this week so we can get things done without him breathing down our necks.’

  ‘That’s always good, when the big chief takes off. You gotta hope they never come back.’

  ‘But I’m skint. I got hit for a parking ticket and a council tax bill first thing on Monday morning. That really pissed me off.’

  ‘You forget to feed the meter?’

  ‘No. Parked it on a double yellow near Hammersmith. Got towed.’

  ‘Shit. They swoop those guys, like a fucking SWAT team. You gotta be careful.’

  ‘The council tax is worse. I live in a shithole but I’m paying a fortune.’

  ‘Back taxes?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s been building up over the last year. I couldn’t afford to pay so I just let it drift.’

  ‘Foolish, my friend. Foolish. You should have come to me. I’d have helped you out.’

  Fortner gives me a paternal pat on the back and I thank him, saying in the nicest possible way that I have no intention of borrowing money off him.

  ‘The council tax,’ he says, ruminatively. ‘What is that, like the poll tax only with a different name?’

  ‘Exactly. It’s like when they change a chocolate bar. Snickers - the new name for Marathon; council tax - the new name for exactly the same tax that caused riots in Trafalgar Square and the downfall of Margaret Thatcher. It’s just had a PR makeover and now suddenly everyone is prepared to put up with it. And it’s just stripped me of two weeks’ wages in one shot.’

  Fortner drains his pint with a long, satisfied gulp and says it’s his round. Mine is still only half-empty. It takes him some time to get the attention of the barmaid, a local girl who has served us before.

  ‘How are you, gents?’ she asks. She has a crisp East End accent. ‘Same again is it?’

  ‘That’s right,’ says Fortner, taking a twenty-pound note from his wallet and snapping it between his fingers. He’s started to pick up in the last few minutes: one more pint and things will be rolling.

  ‘You mind if I make a slight criticism of you, Milius?’ he says, still looking at the girl. ‘Would that be OK?’

  It is as if the fact that he is buying me a drink has suddenly given him the confidence to ask a serious question.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘It’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about for a while now and I thought tonight would give us a good opportunity.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘It’s just that in the time that we’ve known one another - what is it, about six or seven months - you’ve shown a lot of hostility to the way things work over here. Does that sound unfair? I mean, stop me if I’m outta line.’

  He wants to sound me out.

  ‘No, that’s OK.’

  ‘So you know what I’m talkin’ about?’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  Encouraged by this, Former expands on his theme.

  ‘There’s just certain things you say, certain observations you make, like what you just said about the council tax there. For a guy your age you have a very jaded perspective on things. Maybe it’s normal for your generation. I hope you don’t mind me sayin’ this.’

  I don’t mind at all. The barmaid puts two more pints down in front of us and gives Fortner his change.

  ‘Example. Do you really think that the concept of Queen and Country is just a lot of shit?’

  ‘Why did you use that phrase? Queen and Country?’

  ‘Because you did. With Kathy on Saturday night. She told me you’d said you didn’t want to go into the foreign service for patriotic reasons because you thought that kind of stuff was a waste of time. Why d’you feel that way?’

  ‘Maybe it’s difficult for an American to understand,’ I say, trying to find a way of balancing expediency with opinions that I genuinely hold. ‘Although your country is divided in a lot of ways - down racial lines, in the gap between the very rich and the very poor - you’re still bound together by flag-waving patriotism. It’s drummed into you from childhood. God bless America and put a star-spangled banner outside every home. You’re taught to love your country. We don’t have that here, we don’t do things the same way. Loving the country is something blue-rinse Tories do at the party conference in Blackpool. It’s seen as naive: it lacks the requisite degree of cynicism. We’re a divided nation, like yours, but we seem to relish that divisiveness. We have no reason historically to love our country.’

  ‘That’s a crock. Look at the camaraderie you generated during World War Two.’

  ‘Right. And we’ve been living off that for fifty years. Let me tell you: four in ten people in England celebrate St Patrick’s Day every year. How many do you think do something to celebrate St George’s Day?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Four in every hundred. English pubs can get a special late licence to serve on St Patrick’s Day. They can’t if they want to do that on St George’s.’

  ‘That’s pretty sad.’

  ‘Too right it’s pretty sad. It’s pretty fucking embarrassing, too. But that isn’t the reason why I’m jaded, necessarily.’

  ‘Why, then?’

  The builder suddenly scrapes back his stool, bundles up his copy of the Sun, and leaves. He’s heard enough of this.

  ‘I think we’re living in an age of social disintegration,’ I tell Fortner, trying not to sound too apocalyptic.

  ‘You do?’ he replies, nonplussed, as if everyone he has had a conversation with in the last few days has said exactly the same thing.

  ‘Absolutely. Health and education in this country, the two bedrocks of any civilized society, are a disgrace.’

  I almost used the word ‘timebomb’ there, but I can hear Hawkes’s voice in my head: ‘You’re not trying to defect, Alec.’ Then his brisk, cackled laugh.

  I continue:

  ‘For nearly twenty years the government has been more interested in installing pen-pushing bureaucrats into hospitals than it has been in making sure there are enough beds to tend for the sick. And why? Because in these days of enlightened capitalism and free markets, a hospital, just like everything else, has to turn a profit.’

  ‘Come on, Milius. You believe in free markets just as much as the next guy…’

  True. But I don’t admit this.

  ‘Just a second. So in order to make their money they’ve created a culture of fear overseen by big-brother management consultants - no offence to you and Kathy - whose only concern is to get their annual bonus. The last thing it has anything to do with is curing people.’

  Former makes to interrupt me again but I keep on going.

  ‘Education is worse: nobody wants to become a teach
er any more because in the mind of the public, being a teacher is just a notch above cleaning toilets for a living. Just like doctors, they’ve been treated with utter contempt, subjected to endless form-filling, changes in the curriculum, low salaries, you name it. And all because the Tories don’t have the guts to say that the real problem isn’t the teachers, it’s bad parenting. And you know why they don’t say that? Because parents vote.’

  ‘You think that’ll change if Labour win?’

  I give a spluttering laugh, more contemptuous than I had intended.

  ‘No. No way. Maybe they’ll try and make a difference in schools, but until the accumulation of knowledge stops being unfashionable, until kids are encouraged to stay at school past sixteen, and until they find parents who actually take responsibility for their kids when they go home in the evening, nothing will change. Nothing.’

  ‘It’s no different in the States,’ Fortner says, curling his mouth downward and shaking his head. ‘In some cities we have kids checking in assault rifles before assembly. You go to a high school in Watts it’s like passing through security at Tel Aviv airport.’

  ‘Sure. But your system isn’t a toss-up between private and public education. Only a very few people actually pay to go to high school in the States, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘That’s not the case in this country. Here, you can buy your way out of the mess. And the worst of it is that the more state education goes into decline, the more parents are going to send their children to fee-paying schools, and the more teachers are going to want jobs outside the state sector because they don’t need the grief of working in an inner-city comprehensive. So the gap between rich and poor will widen. It’s exactly the same pattern with medical care. The only way not to have to wait three years for an operation is to pay for it. But you want to know what really sickens me?’

  ‘I feel sure you’re gonna tell me.’

  ‘Our fee-paying schools. They have unbelievable facilities, superb teaching resources, and they cost a fortune. But they’re wasted on the people who can afford to go there.’

  ‘Why d’you say that?’

  ‘Look at what the students do after ten years of being privately educated. Most of them go and work in the City with the sole objective of making money. Nobody ever puts anything back in. Nobody is taught to feel a responsibility towards their society. It’s women and children first with those guys, but only if Tarquin isn’t worried about losing the twelve per cent bonus on his offshore investment portfolio. That’s the extent of his imagination.’

  ‘But these are bright guys, Milius. And maybe after working in the City they go into the law or politics, or they start their own small business and create jobs for other people.’

  ‘Bullshit. Excuse me, Fort, but that’s bullshit. They’ll just make sure they have enough money to send their son to Winchester and then the whole cycle will begin all over again. Another generation of inbred fuckwits who are spoon-fed just enough of the right information by gifted teachers that they can scrape through their A-levels, go to university and waste some more of the taxpayer’s money. You know what? We should have to pay to go to university like you do in the States: at least then we’d appreciate it more.’

  Fortner smirks and mutters ‘Yeah’ under his breath. A vapour of sweat has appeared on his forehead and he has a thin line of Guinness threaded across his upper lip.

  I try a different tack.

  ‘Reminds me of a story my father told once.’

  ‘Your late father?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Why did he need to stress that? Late father. Does it make him feel somehow closer to me?

  ‘He said that whenever a Cadillac goes by in America, the man on the street will say, “When I make my fortune, I’m gonna buy one of those.” But when a Rolls-Royce drives past in England, people look at it and say, “Check out the wanker driving the Rolls. How come he’s got one and I haven’t?”’

  This is actually a story Hawkes told me, which I thought would go down well with Fortner.

  ‘That’s what we’re faced with here,’ I tell him. ‘A profound suspicion of anything that smacks of success. It’s got so bad now in public life that I wouldn’t be surprised if no one in my generation wants to go into politics. Who needs the grief?’

  ‘There’ll always be folks lookin’ for power, Milius, whatever the cost to their personal lives. Those guys know how high the stakes are: that’s why they get involved in the first place. Anyway, a minute ago you were attacking politicians. Now you feel sorry for them?’

  I have to be careful not to build in too many contradictions, not to sound too rash. The trick, Hawkes told me, is not to play your hand too early. Sound them out, try to discover what it is that they want to hear, and then deliver it. You must become practised at the art of the second guess. I cannot afford to be cack-handed, to overemphasize like this. Rest assured, he said, that everything you tell them will be infinitely examined for flaws.

  Fortner leans towards me.

  ‘I’ll tell you, I think some of the worst offenders in this are CNN. That station has done more to decimate the art of television news than any other organization on the planet. For a start, it’s just a mouthpiece for whoever happens to be in the White House. It’s an instrument of American imperialism. And secondly, because of the pressure to do reports on the hour, every hour, the reporters never actually go anywhere. They sit in their hotels in Sarajevo or Mogadishu doing their hair and make-up, waiting for a live satellite link-up with the Chicago studio based on information they gleaned from the guy who brought them room service.’

  It’s surprising to hear these kinds of arguments from Fortner. They are the first anti-American sentiments he has ever revealed.

  ‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘But at least you have CNN. At least you had the vision and the balls to set the thing up. Why couldn’t the BBC do that? They have the resources, the staff, the years of experience. And they would have done it a lot better than Ted Turner. Why did it take an American company to create a global news network? I’ll tell you. Because you have the vision and we don’t. It’s just too daunting for us.’

  ‘You got a point,’ he says, tapping his glass. ‘You got a point.’

  My round again.

  It’s past nine thirty and this is as crowded as the pub usually gets. Every so often, Fortner and I are jostled by customers hollering orders from behind our stools. Standing between us, a twig-thin trust-fund hippy waits for the barman to finish pouring the last of the half-dozen pints he paid for with a Coutts & Co. cheque. His jacket smells, and he has no qualms about pushing his thigh up tight against mine. I move to the right to make more room, but he just keeps coming at me, getting closer to the bar, squeezing me up.

  ‘This is intolerable,’ Fortner says. ‘Let’s get outta here.’

  A small group of people are in the process of vacating one of the small tables up a short flight of steps to our right.

  ‘I’ll grab that table,’ I tell him. ‘Bring your stuff.’

  I step down off the stool and make my way over, loitering near by as the students drain their drinks and make for the exit. When enough of them have gone, and before any of the other customers has had time to react, I slide on to one of the vacant chairs, its wood still warm. One girl remains, an expensive-looking Jewish princess with sharp features and highlights in her hair. She is checking her make-up in the mirror of a powder compact. Her black-lined eyes flick up at me momentarily, a fan of lash registering distaste.

  Fortner comes up behind me as the girl moves off.

  ‘I never bought that round,’ I tell him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Of drinks.’

  ‘Oh sure, yeah,’ he says, looking down at the table. ‘Get me a Bloody Mary this time, will ya, Milius? I can feel my insides turnin’ black with all this Guinness.’

  I stand up to go back to the bar as one of the members of staff comes past me with a tall column of pint glasses stacked high
in his arms. He collects the empties from our table and goes on his way, leaving the ashtray full of butts and gum.

  ‘Pint of lager and a Bloody Mary,’ I tell the Kiwi barman. The boy to girl ratio around me is Alaskan: for every reasonably attractive woman, there are now six or seven men crowding up the pub.

  ‘Tabasco, Worcester sauce in the Bloody Mary?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The Kiwi pours the pint and sets it down on a cloth mat in front of me, turning to fill a tumbler with ice. He places that alongside the lager and lifts a half-empty bottle of Smirnoff from a rack below his waist. Rather than simply pour the vodka into the glass, he gives the bottle a 360-degree spin in the flat of his hand and upends it so that a good splash of liquid bounces out of the glass on to the mat. Then, when he has finished pouring a contemptible measure of spirits, he whips the neck of the bottle out of the glass in a fast twist, and the same thing happens again: large drops of vodka land on the mat outside the tumbler, leaving no more than an inch in the glass itself.

  ‘I would have preferred that in the drink,’ I tell him.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ he says, a fake smile frozen on to his face like a gameshow host’s. He drop-slides the bottle back into its rack, fills the glass with Bloody Mary mix and says, ‘Four-twenny.’

  I don’t make a scene. How can you argue with a guy who, ten years after Cocktail, still thinks it’s cool to act like Tom Cruise? He gives me my change and I head back to the table.

  ‘So I’ve been thinking about what you were sayin’ earlier,’ Fortner announces, as if I hadn’t been away. I am still squeezing into my seat when he says: ‘About the difference between here and back home. You may have a point.’

  ‘I definitely have a point. And I haven’t even started yet. You know the thing that frustrates me?’ The music is turned up on a speaker above our heads so I lean in a little closer. ‘It goes back to what we were saying about CNN. How come the world is crawling with mediocre American hamburger and ice cream outlets? Why does no one here get a piece of that?’

  ‘Same reason you were sayin’. You guys just don’t have the vision. You don’t think globally. You tellin’ me the ice cream in Penzance isn’t better than Ben ‘n’ fuckin’ Jerry’s? No way. But those guys were smart for two hippies. They saw the opportunity and they weren’t afraid to hang their balls out a little bit. But your man in Cornwall with his two scoops and a chocolate flake, he doesn’t think like that. That’s why he doesn’t have any outlets in Wisconsin and Ben and Jerry have a store on every street corner in western Europe. And Haagen-Dazs for that matter.’