Serious Sweet (7 page)

You have cried since. But the tears have taken other directions, or you have perhaps not given them your full attention.

The gynaecologist tries to open you again. ‘You're very tense.'

The procedure isn't usually this clumsy.

You feel at fault.

‘If you could relax.'

You grip the armrests as if you are falling and try to breathe at all.

The crying continues.

Deep.

The gynaecologist attempts a factual distraction. ‘It's from the Greek, you know:
kolpos
 – vagina – and
skopos
 – to look.' He tries again and manages less badly.

‘You tend to the left, you know.' This in a voice which is almost fond. Bizarrely fond. ‘I am sorry.'

You hear yourself say, ‘It's OK.' And it is not OK – and especially not today – and your lying about it makes this worse and there is a sob.

Deep.

He dips his head – balding, that pink tenderness of a balding crown: you should focus on that …

He looks through the eyepieces of the instrument, equipment, device and there is a video screen that is – at the same time – showing you to the student with the quiet eyes and the long
name which might be from the Greek also. The student is trying not to be there and he is almost succeeding – he is ashamed for you. He is, nevertheless, staring at the screen and the shades of pink, the glistening which is you, deep in where no one can normally find you.

You don't think it's unreasonable to want to hide.

In faith.

Out fear.

So-hum.

So-hum.

Breathing is supposed to keep you calm, but also it keeps you alive and so you are not calm, because you are alive and being alive is never calm.

And you are going back in your mind, going somewhere too close and too certain and too clear, somewhere in a time which should have vanished but hasn't.

Something catches – something the man is doing to you – and it makes you flinch.

‘Sorry.' You are aware that he probably doesn't enjoy causing you pain and are ready to believe this is why his voice sounds irritated when he tells you, ‘Nearly done.'

‘Mm hm,' you tell him back. ‘Mm hm.'

Mm hm is the opposite of so-hum.

And it betrays you, your letting go into grief. Even though nobody asks, not one person asks the most important question, or writes anything down, you know that your crying means they can see how you are, who you are. No one says anything and you don't say anything and still it's plain that you have been damaged and are still damaged and cannot be fixed.

The gynaecologist tells you, ‘There is thinning and there are changes: menopausal changes rather than your previous kind. We'll send off the tests, but it looks clear.'

And you hear this as an announcement that your last chance to be a woman has already gone.

But the laser has got rid of the bad change in you, the precancerous change. The tick, tick in your head from the presence of
that can now fade … If you really are clear … And you're nearly done and this is a simple procedure and you'll walk back out beyond the door and there'll be a little queue of other women waiting their turn – women for whom this will be nothing and shrugged off and only a mildly inconvenient section of an ordinary day. Or a wonderful day. The rest of this twenty-four hours might be amazing for them. They are outside and sitting and waiting with the loudness of the clock and its tick, tick and it might be tapping away the time between them and forthcoming miracles.

And there could be miracles for you also. Up ahead and beyond this now which is now. You try to think this.

But you are fully weeping when he finishes, when it is over.

There is that last shock of withdrawal and then you're done.

You cannot sit up and be reasonable as fast as you would like.

Kate the nurse tells you to take your time. No one else tells you anything.

The gynaecologist has nodded and drifted away, perhaps left, you can't see.

You lean back against the angle of this final chair and you are aware that you are sobbing, that something is still happening to you, even though they have stopped being in at you, being there and fiddling, being all over you and not stopping.

There is an amount of sympathy from Kate and murmurs from the student doctor and you can hear them both and you would rather not.

You do not want to.

This is, this is the stopit, I love you, stopit, I can't, I love you, stop it, you don't love me, you don't love me, you don't, you shouldn't and stopitstopitstopitstopitstopit under my breath where he couldn't find it, in under my breath.

In faith.

Out fear.

He found everything else.

You do not enjoy being hurt.

But you have been hurt.

I can't help it if I don't like this.

It keeps you naked, even after you are fully dressed.

I don't like this.

In some stupid and nasty way, you have stayed naked for a long time.

Stopit.

He isn't here but he might as well be.

You would rather not be reminded. That would be your preference.

Stopit.

There's the shape of him in me.

You would rather not be reminded that you have gone on and lived – not lived wonderfully, but still lived. You've kept on for all of this time, been naked but keeping on, and you must therefore be remarkable.

Stopit.

You are remarkable and therefore you walk – gently walk – back to sit on the chair in the corner –
where bad girls sit at school
 – and you draw round the curtain and you wipe your face using the tissue which the nurse pressed into your hand and you are therefore reminded, therefore remarkable, therefore reminded.

Stopit.

I know that the shape of me is bigger than the shape of him.

I do know that.

You are remarkable and reminded and gentle and pressed and a bad girl in a corner and not living wonderfully, but still living, has made you tired.

And you are trying to press your heart into your hand, so as not to be naked – and if you could do that you would be remarkable, but you can't – and the nurse talks to you through the still-drawn curtain, ‘All right, Meg?' and she reminds you that you're not.

But you open your eyes and have to answer her, ‘Mm hm.'

And you do what you have to, you keep on.

And this feeling – it doesn't go away.

BY THE RIVER
, on the South Bank, a bleak day is punching between angles of concrete, sheering along walls to gather up pressure and speed. Heavy cloud is grinding overhead, fat with blue-black threat, although it may not rain. The February sky and the water are sorely depressing each other. The Thames is high and has turned the colour of wet iron, it is making a muddy and rusty heave up from its estuary, from perhaps a troubled sea.

Pedestrians are sparse and hurried. Some carry umbrellas they'll find impossible to use in the bankside winds. They carry them anyway. There is still ice in the chinks and seams of the pavement. The heat of the year hasn't woken yet.

Running along the line of the kerb, dodging, comes a youngish man, his arms outstretched, long hair flaming upwards darkly. His anorak is loose, broad-sleeved, and catches each gust of wind.

For long moments he is his own sail.

From time to time he leaps.

The air snags away his voice, shreds it, but sometimes it is still possible to hear that he is whooping, laughing.

But something in his tone suggests fury.

What few people there are avoid him.

Jon had masters. This was an unfashionable way to term his position, but he was a servant and that did imply masters, which had further implications. Although, strictly speaking, he served the Queen. He worked, after all, within Her Majesty's Government. So he had a mistress, then.

Always the women.

But he was hired out, made available for the sake of practicality and the functioning of a stable and democratic state. He served his queen by serving the ministers who served her. He was the servant of servants.

A passed-around servant of servants, hand to hand.

His phone twitched. Another text, one of a series. But not Sansom-related.

He replied. Or rather, composed one compact and effective message, thought about it, erased it, paused to make another, adjusted it and then sent his final draft. He had to tuck his briefcase away safely between his feet and stand in a doorway to accomplish this. He sent another text. He frowned.

Jonathan Sigurdsson, the king of felicitous rephrasing.

Well, it is a skill.

He texted again. One letter.

He ignored the shake in both his hands, retrieved his briefcase and then strode out briskly again. It wouldn't do, somehow, to rush, pound along the street, release that flavour of desperation. So he never did, never had in the recent past, except for that one time … Still, being brisk was permissible. It projected a firmness of purpose. Which he did have, both as an individual and as one of his kind – the men who make ideas into realities, who translate words into provisions, schemes, systems, ongoing experiences, lives.

Tell me what to create and I'll make sure somebody creates it. Or at least investigates its creation.

Promise, cross my heart. Just let me loose and I will do it – I know how.

Jon was heading for Tothill Street again after a jaunt involving the purchase of pristine trousers. (Which wouldn't fit that well – he had a longer leg than average and a deep, but narrow waist, in conjunction with what was termed a hollow back.)

Not hollow inside, not exactly, which is a mercy. Although that wouldn't quite be a feature one's tailor would see.

Not true – it's just what any proper tailor sees – it's why he tucks you up in special cloth and tries his best to make you look substantial. He understands that you need help.

Jon was aware that he suffered from areas of sagging – afflicting both the trousers and the man. But at least his bird-struck pair had been dropped in at the dry-cleaner's and he was operational again.

10.58 – I've only been gone half an hour: that's not bad for a round trip to buy temporary corduroy trousers. I am, as we must now all say, customer-facing and therefore unable to spend a day on show with – as previously established – a potentially lascivious inner-thigh stain.

My customers wouldn't like it – they would make assumptions.

Always the women.

Even when it's not.

But these are terrible trousers. Or acceptable, but unsuitable for today. The best of a frightening lot: pink corduroy, gold corduroy, yellow corduroy, powder-blue corduroy, purple … Christ … it was either that or even more horrifying options in linen – twenty seconds after you've got inside it, linen's like wearing a week-old handkerchief, you can't win … The predictably garish choices preferred by gentlemen of influence. Serves me right for trying to shop in Mayfair, where it's hard not to be imprisoned by the Henley Colour Chart: camp faux-schoolboy ensembles, and hopes of faux-hooker girls to totter along on a suitable chap's arm or thereabouts, heels sinking into the turf – the valueless values to which we must aspire …

Says the man who gets anxious if he has to buy a ready-to-wear shirt.

I opted for navy corduroy in the trousers. It was the only sober choice.

And my new shirt is relatively awful, but at least fresh. Blue overcheck tattersall in brushed cotton. I took so long about the trousers, I'd lost the will to choose anything better. Too short in the arms and too loose in the shoulders, but it doesn't make me seem unreliable or predatory, which many of the others did …

And flannel is soft.

As if that would matter … Only it slightly does, somehow.

It really does.

Mild rash on my forearms – nerves – which don't actually enjoy the texture of brushed cotton, but that can't be helped.

He was very breathless, which was not a good sign.

But all is well. More than. Everything is fine. Navy cord. Everything is saveable. I have unused capacity for saving. And that's fine.

He briefly attempted to remember the name of the retired policeman in
Gaslight
 – the one who rescued Diana Wynyard from Anton Walbrook's dodgy foreign husband and his tricks with her mind. Jon had always loved the moment when the old copper gave a yell, ‘I've saved you!' and slapped his own thigh. That's how Jon remembered it – ‘I've saved you!' – someone saying this and being as certain as anything and happy, right through to his boots.

It's all fine. I'm on track.

I'm in navy cord and a suit jacket without the suit trousers – an orphaned jacket which only agrees with the shirt and barely that – town and country having a fight across all of my surfaces, but I'll do. I may almost pass.

And he wasn't too hot. Not flustered.

He did have these small red prickles of something on his skin – despair, unease, panic. If he rolled up his sleeves he suspected he would somehow give himself away and this was an ugliness to add to all his others.

But perhaps they could be forgivable. And at least I only give myself away – I do not offer myself up for sale.

And I was efficacious in the office before disappearing, I didn't just dash in and out inexplicably. The team is happy and they know that I am happy, or have assumed that I'm happy, in as far as they care, or should care, about whether I'm happy or anything else. We are each of us sculling quietly along in purdah. I can be in both navy cord and purdah … And brushed cotton.

I smell like the inside of the shop. Brisk and powder dry and gentlemanly.

His heart did something not unpleasant in his chest.

I am two kinds of gentlemanly brisk.

I didn't buy a tie to match my ensemble. My original tie is now in my briefcase like a guilty secret and I am going about with an unencumbered and unbuttoned collar.

I can do that.

Every available tie in the shops showed something one's meant to shoot: grouse, pheasants, hares. Although nothing that depicted miniature poachers, burglars, travellers, ravers, Rastas, happily married gay couples, birds of prey.

He consciously changed his case from one hand to the other so that he could break his train of thought.

It's OK.

Nothing is actually irritating me.

I am fine.

Today is fine.

Purdah is fine.

That period of grace within which our masters – but why not call them customers …? If they want me to be customer-facing, then they have to be customers … If they want to be all neo-liberal about it, then they can be customers. It suits them. So. Our customers cannot currently demand and insist quite as they usually do, because they are busy defending themselves against losing power, busy being loudly scared on our behalf, busy having all the usual public emotions, while still other customers do much the same and heartily defend themselves from every natural and unnatural shock that might creep in and thwart them, bar them from righteous success, from finally gaining control of their ambitions. (Or rather giving their ambitions full scope to roam.) Enchanting though all of our possible futures might be, we cannot currently offer our customers anything more than rudimentary assistance. All that remains – sadly, mainly – is to measure up their futures, plan the ways we'd cut our cloth for them, trying to ensure their hollowness won't show. This is impossible, but not something we aren't used to.

Which means these are easy days. Should be.

We prepare ourselves for what This Lot will do if they stay in government. We prepare ourselves for what That Lot will do if it turns out they get to play with the special toys. And then we must ponder The Other Lot. And we must even consider the chances of – angels and ministers of grace defend us – Them. Or even Them. We spend time in consideration of Them.

We explore whatever more and less grotesque conjunctions and alliances may be expected to arise and the minority hopes and promises these might unleash. We treat manifestos as if they were written on thrice-blessed tissues of silk, employing a distillation of truth made visible with an admixture of brave men's tears and each word dusted dry with fine powder derived from noble children's bones. We take each listed vow as binding. As binding as a woman's love. If I might say that. And then we calculate the weight of every promise, we judge the urgency and hidden implications of each dream. Just so we know.

I mean, we do it all nicely for them – so they can rush in on that happy post-election morning and squabble about who gets which room at Number 10: inner sanctum, outer sanctum, sofas or easy chairs, Cabinet Room, White Room, Ground Floor, First Floor … Which spare bathroom can they convert …? They'll cobble together a Cabinet within the next forty-eight hours … remember who's been promised what, which oversqueezed peach has been twice and thrice promised elsewhere … And one sentence must follow another, put a shine on the Queen's Speech, so that it can be rushed off to hit the goatskin and be all ready for Her Majesty's Voice … Goatskin … Written on sodding goatskin – says it all. Or rather the Queen says it all – once it's been presented on bended knee … Which also, as above …

How many years did we have a prime minister who could barely turn on a computer and who slightly worried when he did …? The machines made him feel inadequate – as if God might one day leave him for another source of information.

But we work on.

And when anything goes wrong we won't be surprised. We have our models, we can foresee.

Much good it does us when nobody listens.

Much good it does us when the central collation of data will always seem to come between God and His elected and give rise to the contradiction of core aims and objectives and also create disproportionate expense.

It is disproportionately expensive for our masters to know anything.

It is disproportionately expensive for our masters to be informed and therefore culpable.

It is disproportionately expensive for our masters to be culpable.

And yet they are still, of course, culpable. Forever.

And now they are forever uninformed.

But we continue to inform them, to toil for them, as if it matters what we do.

I continue to toil also.

There's a sort of nobility about that.

There's a sort of stupidity about that.

And after the election some of those I serve will leave and others will arrive – for various reasons, innocent and malign. And I may be ageing, but it seems the new intake is each time not only younger, but more ignorant and happier and more steadfast about its ignorance. They have found it to be their bliss. We must try to inform them – that's our duty – but, because they don't like it, we no longer inform them very much. They insist on attending only to their demons – internal and external – and to their familiar spirits who whisper better spells than ours into their ears, draw flattering conclusions.

Their visitors from the outer world: industry, finance and so forth – Business – these are the sources of all wisdom.

They are the Neighbour's Dogs. A bank, say, lends us someone to talk with, work with, as a new neighbour might ask us to walk, or feed, or please just keep an eye on their dog. You get used to the dog, you know it, you take to it – and then your neighbour has to be your friend. Because of the dog. Whitehall is cluttered with Neighbours' Dogs. They roam the Estate, shit in the hallways and bark.

Makes me tired. Knackered.

Cynical.

No, this isn't cynical. This is so far from being fully cynical, I promise … So far from a full awareness of failings and wrongs.

And change will be instituted – inflicted on all but those who institute it – because there must always be change, especially where it is least needed, least expected, least wanted, because that's where change will catch the eye. My masters like to draw a crowd.