Time of Lies Read online

  She chose minor variations on what Patrick chose – vodka instead of gin with tonic in the bar, creamed parsnips instead of potatoes with the roast beef in the dining room – but by the time they went for coffee in the library, her tongue had loosened. The Athenaeum was a cocoon of little rules, a bird’s nest made by weaving together peculiarities. Here the point of everything, Kathy argued, was to be unlike everywhere else. Phones were not allowed. Working was not allowed. The member, not the waiter, wrote the food order on a pad. The menu had no prices. Coffee was taken in the library. On the grand staircase, presiding over the whole show, was an oddly-numbered clock.

  ‘It’s as if you can’t do things by common sense any more,’ she complained. ‘It makes me feel like I’m six years old again.’

  ‘You’re sounding like an ungrateful politician,’ Patrick laughed. ‘Everything is a conspiracy. The unwritten constitution. The Civil Service. The BBC. The tall policemen. Trust me, the whole world is a web of cock-up, not conspiracy.’ He shared some stories about the Pentagon which made Kathy’s jaw drop.

  In fact, Kathy’s name had come up less than a week ago in conversation with Patrick’s American opposite number. Hearing about herself like this was an excruciating out-of-body experience, like being called for a photo shoot for Vogue; Kathy was sure that at any minute Patrick would realise that he had confused her with someone else. But without missing a beat Patrick followed up with a solicitous enquiry about Cairstine. When Kathy gave her honest and pained response Patrick half-closed his eyes in sympathy, mentioning someone in his own family and giving her right hand the briefest of supportive touches.

  Since the library was the place for coffee, this was where they were sitting. Patrick’s attention was flattering but Kathy was the tiniest of the pawns on the chessboard on which he was playing. She would never be able to play the games Patrick played so effortlessly. At least, she assumed not; nor was she sure of wanting to be the kind of person who could.

  ‘The theory that we civil servants are in charge is patently not true. I’ve never known politics to be in such a mess. It’s not just one party, it’s all of them. If it had been down to you and I, we’d never have allowed it. Look at this!’

  He gestured towards the evening paper. The headline announced the election pledge unveiled by Labour 4 You on the barge: Beyond 24/7 – the new standard for public services: 36/9.

  Kathy picked the paper up. ‘Thirty-six national targets backed up by nine principles of public life.’

  ‘It’s bonkers.’ Patrick waved his hands in horror, the political scientist confronted by the refusal of the democratic experiment to obey the laws of logic. ‘One party promises but doesn’t deliver a 24/7 NHS, so the next party has to not-deliver something better. I bet focus groups said 36/9 sounded better than 24/7.’

  Thirty-six divided by nine was four while twenty-four divided by seven was three point … The whole thing was beyond daft.

  Patrick stood up and thumped the back of a Chesterfield sofa. The behinds of countless scientists, mandarins and bishops had polished the red leather to a slippery sheen. ‘The game’s changed, and we’re not ready for it. We, the Civil Service. We’re still doing the same old, same old. We’re preparing briefings for eight possible new governments because we always have, and every page I turn makes me feel we’re missing the point. We analyse speeches and manifestos as if they were propositions in geometry, but look at what Brexit turned out to mean. It was a dance craze – the game was show up and make moves. The moves were right if everyone else in the club danced with you.’

  ‘The other problem with manifestos is rabbits out of hats,’ Kathy mused. ‘Stuff that never was in the manifesto, or is opposite to the manifesto. Like May and grammar schools or Osborne and his budgets.’

  Patrick nodded. ‘Or Gordon Brown giving up control of interest rates.’

  ‘Instead of briefing, what about some war-gaming?’ Kathy ventured. Within the Ministry Patrick was the arch-evangelist for gaming surprise scenarios when preparing to fight an enemy. She realised that politicians were not supposed to be the enemy, but on the other hand they certainly weren’t friends.

  The light in Patrick’s eyes went up a hundred watts. ‘You know … why not? Democratic war-gaming. Kathy, you’ve done it. The data boys can crunch the social media and the wild cards in other countries as well, Trump, Le Pen, Beppe Grillo, AfD. The Scandinavians too. What a shame: we started reading their crime novels and they started reading our rightwing blogs. And call RADA or Equity and find some people who can play our next prime minister. Confidentially, of course; not a whiff to the media.’

  ‘You want someone to play Bob Grant?’

  ‘He’s first on the list – the least house-trained and he might win.’

  Kathy joined Patrick by the window, looking out on Pall Mall. ‘Do you really think so?’ Kathy asked. ‘Even after Brexit and Trump, it seems impossible: no-one in BG has done anything in government before. They’ve never asked a question in Parliament, let alone answered one. If you were a passenger in a jet, you wouldn’t elect a pilot who’d never heard of flaps.’

  ‘Voters aren’t seeing it like that. For them it’s more like the regular pilots keep crashing the plane, so let’s bin the lot of them.’

  ‘But now Bob has attacked hard-working families …’

  ‘And has he gone down in the polls, or up? He could announce the strangulation of the first-born and his numbers might still go up. It’s scary. But we’ll deal with it. It’s our job.’ We the Civil Service. We Patrick and Kathy.

  The Jaguar XF was waiting in Carlton House Terrace so Kathy accepted a lift to Waterloo. Terence had spent the last two hours giving the car a hand polish. Such was the place of nostalgia in this part of London that the car’s shimmering roof reflected the glow of a gas street lamp. Was there also a hovering black triangle? Kathy’s head snapped back but she saw nothing. It was just her imagination working 36/9.

  7

  London, Tuesday 21 April 2020

  I’m sitting in my studio working on estate agent jokes – that’s the back bedroom at 102A Walsingham Road, Putney. The sash is up, my head is down and the chilled beats of ‘I Smoke Two Joints’ (the Sublime version) loiter briefly above the pages of today’s Guardian. Squalls are promised for the evening.

  This after-dinner gig is on Saturday – fifteen minutes, £200 cash in hand and dinner – for some Putney estate agents. Traditionally Saturday is estate agents’ busiest day in the office. My agent Troy booked me for it six months ago. He remembered my three ridiculously successful months of telesales for a Chelsea developer, calling numbers in Moscow and Hong Kong and Dubai in a Royal Shakespeare Company voice. My success was pure luck: the three months came after the Brexit plunge in the pound and before the 2018 crisis. Still, Troy sold me into the gig on a ticket of an actor’s lessons on closing the deal, plus no travelling expenses.

  Six months ago the fact that my calls were deal-opening not deal-closing seemed like high pedantry, and the gig went clean out of my head until I turned over the double page for April in my diary. (When you’re as busy as I am, two pages to a month is fine.) Shit! I’ve gorged on sales videos on YouTube and can bluff my way through seven minutes of lessons, max, but that leaves me half-dressed. Seeing Jimmy Keohane made me think, there’s a painless second half – just get them laughing.

  Where we live, the terraced houses in the low 100s in Walsingham Road ‘benefit’, in estate agent speak, from back gardens. They benefit even more from compactness. The three bedrooms are small and you can forget en suite. Looking at our own handkerchief of green, you could roll it up and store it in a drawer overnight.

  I can see into the garden of 106. That’s the end-of-terrace grassed dead zone. It’s trimmed monthly and repels birds, cats and foxes ultrasonically. It sold for £1.4 million just before the crash. An absentee Singaporean dentist bought it for its one-hundred-foot garden.
He should have counted his apostrophes carefully – it’s a smoker’s garden, one hundred inches. Estate agents and apostrophes – two declines in civilisation for the price of one. Starting from scratch I’ve got two pages of laughs just out of estate agents and size.

  The owner of 106 has never been to the property. We know that because 104 which adjoins is owned by our neighbour, Alan Tinker. Our place, 102A, is the ground and first floor maisonette on the other side. 102B is the studio flat above us, let by a digital company for short-stay executives. Alan, a retired banker, is constantly about like a friendly owl, reassuring rather than prying: more neighbourhood clock than neighbourhood watch. He chats to the lady who visits 106 once a month to do the necessary and run a mower over the garden. She’s never met the owner.

  In his jocular way Alan blames the 2018 financial crisis on the sale of 106 – global financial markets seized up two weeks after the sale, et après ça, le déluge. 106 is no penthouse, nor even a city centre love nest, so Alan reasons that it was bought by someone ordinary. Alan uses the word ‘ordinary’ a lot: ordinary tomatoes, an ordinary production of Othello, that sort of thing. Anyway, a market in which someone ordinary couldn’t be arsed to see or rent out a £1.4 million property investment was a market heading for trouble. The ensuing horrendous financial meltdown stopped Alan’s winter pilgrimages to Cape Town (‘a very ordinary B&B in Sea Point but the location is charming’) and obliged him to invest most of his pension in 104. There are two spare bedrooms so his children can visit – one bedroom for each marriage.

  I get the Guardian on paper despite the price. Having a security blanket that flips between portrait and landscape just doesn’t work for me. Today’s main editorial is a Tracy Island masterwork of pointless passion and lucidity: the two Labour parties should recognise a national emergency, merge and invite Thunderbird 4 – sorry, Polly Toynbee – to be leader. It’s scary how hope has been sucked out of our national life, and it’s getting hard to breathe. I’ve never found it more important to read about how the world should be, not just how it is.

  I’m about to put my hand back to the humorous plough when I half-imagine Alan calling my name from the front of the house. When I hear ‘Zack!’ a second time, I grab my vaper and head downstairs.

  Alan is standing in front of 104, facing an incongruous pair: a stocky forty-year-old in a shiny double-breasted suit, and a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl in an outfit from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The man obviously needs directions back to the cruise ship where he mangles songs for pensioners. The schoolgirl is holding a clipboard. The give-aways are the giant rosettes: a red and white lion clawing a double ribbon in black and blue. Why is Alan wasting his time talking to canvassers from any of the parties, let alone BG?

  ‘Sorry to bother you, Zack, but it seemed the simplest way to show them that 102 isn’t empty.’

  ‘Why would it be empty?’ I ask the canvassers.

  ‘We’re checking, Mr…’ The crooner peers over the schoolgirl’s shoulder. ‘McGinnis? 102A?’

  ‘Parris.’ I assume they are looking at a copy of the electoral roll.

  ‘Of course. Delighted to meet you, Mr Parris. Ed Williams, your local BG councillor.’

  I ignored the proffered hand. ‘You might be local in Wandsworth but we’ve no BG councillors here. Anyway, no-one in my house will be voting BG at the election, and my friend here is too smart for your clap-trap’ – Alan nods vigorously – ‘so feel free to move along and stop spoiling his day.’

  His assistant exhibits her braces. ‘We’re not canvassing for votes. Please vote for whoever you want.’

  ‘I shall. We call it democracy. I expect they’ll cover it in your classes soon, unless someone abolishes it first.’

  ‘I hope not!’ she exclaims. ‘I’m not old enough to vote yet. What we’re doing is for after the election, when we’re in power. Have you heard about BG’s Empty Homes Survey? So, 102A isn’t empty, but what about 102B?’ The clipboard is a tablet; she switches hands and it flips from portrait to landscape – ugh. ‘There’s no-one at 102B on the electoral roll.’

  ‘Where’s your authority to carry out this survey? You’re not the government yet, you know.’

  Ed gets back in charge. ‘We’ve identified that 106 is empty. Mr Tinker confirms that.’

  Alan nods sheepishly. ‘I didn’t realise… I was a bit slow.’

  ‘Alan, it’s not your fault. Blame these two. So, your licence?’

  ‘There’s no licence needed to stand up for British homes for British citizens. We’re going to pick protected areas where only British citizens will be allowed to buy residential property. Tories, Labour, they both sold Britain to foreigners, when we have had a housing crisis for three decades. But we’re calling time on all that.’

  ‘You won’t dare. House prices would collapse. You’d destroy everyone’s savings!’ Alan starts to shake.

  Ed gives him a funny look; maybe before cruise ships he worked in prisons. ‘That sounds like banker-talk to me. You weren’t a banker by any chance? Alan Tinker – make a note to check, Jeanette.’

  ‘We hate bankers,’ chirps Jeanette as she works the tablet. A gust of wind flattens her skirt.

  The whiff of banker whets Ed’s appetite. ‘Do you know what they have in banker heaven, Mr Tinker? In Switzerland? They have strict laws on foreigners buying property. What’s sauce for the goose… You’re not an estate agent by any chance, Mr Parris? We hate estate agents almost as much as bankers. Selling our country to foreigners.’ I get the eye scan which he just gave Alan, plus I’m wearing an at-home cotton polyester jumper from which the smell of weed never washes out. ‘No, long-haired lazy arse, more like. Get yourself a job. You should be ashamed of yourself, living off Miss McGinnis. Or Mr McGinnis.’

  I spit on the pavement and hit Ed’s left shoe, a scuffed salesman’s special.

  ***

  It was a wet ten-past-seven when Kathy exited Putney station. She judged it a close call whether she would make it to 102A before the gusts threw her umbrella around like a shuttlecock. Zack had texted to say that Alan was joining them for supper; could she pick up a bottle of red on her way home? Given Alan’s views on ordinary, Kathy would normally have headed to Waitrose to pick up, perhaps, a Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. However, the extra fifteen minutes’ walk would have been not so much tempting the weather god as sticking her hand down its trousers. Instead, the Rear Admiral was en route. How much harm could any pub do to an unopened bottle of Chilean Merlot?

  She pushed past the signs saying ‘no football colours’ and ‘Every Tuesday: double burger and extra chips for £5.99’ to enter a surprisingly clean, brightly-lit pub. The special offer was doing a brisk trade at numbered tables. Kathy kept her raincoat buttoned and her uniform to herself. The assistant manager, announced by his name badge and barely in his twenties, was helpful, cheery and well-organised. When she passed on the Tuesday offer, he didn’t miss a beat in pointing out that Wednesday was curry night. He even went down into the cellar to bring up a case of Merlot, instead of pretending that the crimson blend on the shelf behind him was all they had in stock.

  Kathy’s eye roamed lightly over the Rear Admiral’s slice of London: two pensioner couples, two middle-aged couples with four young children and two babies, a group of older men who might have been there all afternoon and two groups in their late teens – girls in awkward shoes and cheap jewellery, and mainly white young men with flat-top haircuts and the occasional tattoo. All the tables sagged under pint glasses and plastic ketchup bottles. Kathy’s glance didn’t linger. In any case the tableau dissolved in a roar thanks to the wide-screen television.

  The heavens burst when she was barely three minutes from home. Fighting the wind with her umbrella saved her top half, but from the knees down she was dripping. The door of 102, and then the interior door to 102A, led to the aroma of Zack’s home-made lasagne. Zack had perfected a recipe with f
our cheeses, aubergine and dried porcini mushrooms which fixed most problems temporarily. Neither the two of them nor Alan were vegetarians: the recipe was simply better without meat. Creating tasty cheap meals was something an actor could take pride in, and Zack did. Alan kissed Kathy on both cheeks and Zack gave her a hug. Once she had changed out of her wet clothes, they told her about the BG survey.

  ‘I get confused,’ mused Alan. ‘They were surveying empty homes – or they said they were – but their policy is about foreign ownership.’

  Zack shook his head. ‘That’s no more confused than any other party’s policies. We’ve got total mental chaos going on. What about 36/9, for heaven’s sake?’ He whistled a version of The X-Files theme tune.

  Kathy offered a memory. ‘BG said something two months ago about taking over empty homes, but it wasn’t clear they meant it.’

  Alan’s confusion worsened. ‘Are they on the left or on the right? They want to slash benefits but take over empty homes. They want to spend more on defence and they attack business – well, financial services. They’re against immigration but for black people. What’s the game?’

  ‘Game’ reminded Kathy of her conversations with Patrick. He hadn’t been joking about war-gaming the election. She had been on the phone all day getting that to start next week; not that she could share confidential Civil Service information with Alan. She might with Zack later. Instead she said, ‘Their game is changing the game.’

  ‘Except the game is still getting elected.’

  Zack got animated. ‘Sure, but look at their visit this morning. They didn’t do traditional canvassing. Instead they acted as if they didn’t need to; as if they were going to win.’