England, England Read online

  When Sir Jack was satisfied – and you never quite knew what did satisfy Sir Jack – he took his bulk back to the middle of the room. Murano glass above his head, shagpile lapping his laces, he swilled another grave question around his palate.

  ‘Is my name … real?’ Sir Jack considered the matter, as did his two employees. Some believed that Sir Jack’s name was not real in a straightforward sense, and that a few decades earlier he had deprived it of its Mitteleuropäisch tinge. Others had it on authority that, though born some way east of the Rhine, little Jacky was in fact the result of a garage liaison between the shire-bred English wife of a Hungarian glass manufacturer and a visiting chauffeur from Loughborough, and thus, despite his upbringing, original passport, and occasional fluffed vowel, his blood was one hundred percent British. Conspiracy theorists and profound cynics went further, suggesting that the fluffed vowels were themselves a device: Sir Jack Pitman was the son of a humble Mr and Mrs Pitman, long since paid off, and the tycoon had allowed the myth of continental origin slowly to surround him; though whether for reasons of personal mystique or professional advantage, they could not decide. None of these hypotheses received support on this occasion, as he supplied his own answer. ‘When a man has sired nothing but daughters, his name is a mere trinket on loan from eternity.’

  A cosmic shudder, which may have been digestive in origin, ran through Sir Jack Pitman. He swivelled, puffed smoke, and eased into his peroration.

  ‘Are great ideas real? The philosophers would have us believe so. Of course, I have had great ideas in my time, but somehow – do not record this, Paul, I am not certain it is for the archive – somehow, sometimes I wonder how real they were. These may be the ramblings of a senile fool – I do not hear your cries of contradiction so I presume you agree – but perhaps there is life in the old dog yet. Perhaps what I need is one last great idea. One for the road, eh, Paul? That you may record.’

  Paul tapped in, ‘Perhaps what I need is one last great idea,’ looked at it on the screen, remembered that he was responsible for rewrites as well, that he was, as Sir Jack had once put it, ‘my personal Hansard,’ and deleted the wimpish ‘Perhaps.’ In its more assertive form the statement would enter the archive, timed and dated.

  Sir Jack good-humouredly lodged his cigar in the stomach-hole of a Henry Moore maquette, stretched and pirouetted lightly. ‘Tell Woodie it’s time,’ he said to his PA, whose name he could never remember. In one sense, of course, he could: it was Susie. This was because he called all his PAs Susie. They seemed to come and go at some speed. So it was not really her name he was unsure of, but her identity. Just as he’d been saying a moment ago – to what extent was she real? Quite.

  He retrieved his jacket from the Brancusi and shrugged it past his MCC braces. In the Quote Room he paused to read again the familiar citation. He knew it by heart, of course, but still liked to linger over it. Yes, one last great idea. The world had not been entirely respectful in recent years. Well then, the world needed to be astonished.

  Paul initialled his memorandum and stored it. The latest Susie rang down to the chauffeur and reported on their employer’s mood. Then she picked up his cigar, and returned it to Sir Jack’s desk drawer.

  ‘DREAM A LITTLE with me, if you please.’ Sir Jack raised the decanter interrogatively.

  ‘My time, your money,’ replied Jerry Batson of Cabot, Albertazzi and Batson. His manner was always agreeable and always opaque. For instance, he made no evident response, by word or gesture, to the offered drink, yet it was somehow clear that he was politely accepting an armagnac which he would then politely, agreeably, and opaquely judge.

  ‘Your brain, my money.’ Sir Jack’s correction was an amiable growl. You didn’t jerk someone like Jerry Batson around, but the residual instinct to establish dominance never left Sir Jack. He did so by his heartiness, his embonpoint, his preference for staying on his feet while others sat, and his habit of automatically correcting his interlocutor’s first utterance. Jerry Batson’s technique was different. He was a slight figure, with greying curly hair and a soft handshake he preferred not to give. His manner of establishing, or contesting, dominance was by declining to seek it, by retreating into a little Zen moment where he was a mere pebble washed briefly in a noisy stream, by sitting there neutrally, just feeling the feng shui of the place.

  Sir Jack dealt with the crème de la few, so he dealt with Jerry Batson of Cabot, Albertazzi and Batson. Most people assumed that Cabot and Albertazzi were Jerry’s transatlantic and Milanese associates, and imagined they must resent the way in which the international triumvirate effectively meant nothing but Batson. Neither, in fact, resented the primacy of Jerry Batson, since neither of them – despite having offices, bank accounts, and monthly salaries – in fact existed. They were early examples of Jerry’s soft-handed skill with the truth. ‘If you can’t present yourself, how can you be expected to present a product?’ he had been inclined to murmur in his earlier, candid, pre-global days. Even now, twenty or more years on, he was still inclined, in post-prandial or reminiscing mood, to accord real existence to his sleeping partners. ‘Bob Cabot taught me one of the first lessons of this business …’ he would begin. Or, ‘Of course, Silvio and I never used to agree about …’ Perhaps the reality of those monthly Channel Island transfers had invested the account-holders with lingering corporeality.

  Jerry accepted the glass of armagnac and sat quietly while Sir Jack went through the swirling and snuffling, the gum-rinse and the ecstatic eyes. Jerry wore a dark suit, spotted tie and black loafers. The uniform was easily emended to murmur youth, age, fashionability or gravitas; cashmere polo-necks, Missoni socks, and designer specs with plain-glass lenses all offered nuance. But with Sir Jack he displayed no professional accessories, human or mechanical. He sat there smiling a nominal subservience, almost as if waiting for his client to define the terms of employment.

  Of course, the time was long past when ‘clients’ ‘employed’ Jerry Batson. A key prepositional switch had taken place a decade back, when Jerry decided that he worked with people rather than for them. Thus, at different periods (though also sometimes not) he had worked with the CBI and the TUC, with animal liberation and the fur trade, with Greenpeace and the nuclear industry, with all the main political parties and several splinter groups. At about the same time he had begun discouraging such crude labels as ad-man, lobbyist, crisis manager, image-rectifier, and corporate strategist. Nowadays Jerry, mystery man and black-tied alumnus of the party pages, where they hinted that he was soon to become Sir Jerry, preferred to position himself differently. He was a consultant to the elect. Not to the elected, he liked to point out, but the elect. Hence his presence in Sir Jack’s city penthouse, sipping Sir Jack’s armagnac, with the whole of darkened, sparkling London behind a curtain-wall of glass against which his loafered feet gently tapped. He was here to crunch a few ideas. His very presence provoked synergy.

  ‘You have a new account,’ announced Sir Jack.

  ‘I do?’ There was the mildest, opaquest frown in the voice. ‘Silvio and Bob handle all the new accounts.’ Everyone knew this. He, Jerry, was above the battle. He used to think of himself as a kind of superior lawyer, one arguing his cases in the higher, wider courts of public opinion and public emotion. Lately, he had promoted himself to the judiciary. That was why talk of accounts in his presence was frankly a touch vulgar. But then you did not expect delicacy from Sir Jack. Everyone agreed that he was a little short – for whatever reason – of finesse and savoir.

  ‘No, Jerry, my friend, this is both a new account and a very old one. All I ask, as I say, is for you to dream a little with me.’

  ‘Will I like this dream?’ Jerry affected a slight nervousness.

  ‘Your new client is England.’

  ‘England?’

  ‘Just so.’

  ‘Are you buying, Jack?’

  ‘Let’s dream that I am. In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘You want me to dream?’

 
; Sir Jack nodded. Jerry Batson took out a silver snuff-box, sprang open the lid, launched the contents of a tensed thumb-hollow up each nostril, and sneezed without conviction into a paisley handkerchief. The snuff was darkened cocaine, as Sir Jack probably knew. They sat in matching Louis Farouk armchairs. London was at their feet, as if waiting to be discussed.

  ‘Time is the problem,’ Jerry began. ‘In my judgment. Always has been. People just don’t accept it, not even in their daily lives. “You’re only as old as you feel,” they say. Correction. You are as old, and exactly as old, as you are. True of individuals, relationships, societies, nations. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a patriot, and I bow to none in admiration of this great country of ours, I love the place to bits. But the problem can be put in simple terms: a refusal to face the mirror. I grant you we’re not unique in this respect, but among those in the family of nations who paste on the slap every morning whistling You’re only as old as you feel, we are an egregious case.’

  ‘Egregious?’ queried Sir Jack. ‘I am a patriot too, you forget.’

  ‘So England comes to me, and what do I say to her? I say, “Listen, baby, face facts. We’re in the third millennium and your tits have dropped. The solution is not a push-up bra.” ’

  Some people thought Jerry Batson a cynic; others merely a scoundrel. But he was not a hypocrite. He considered himself a patriot; what’s more, he had the memberships where Sir Jack had only the braces. Yet he did not believe in mindless ancestor-worship; for him, patriotism should be pro-active. There were still old-timers around nostalgic for the British Empire; just as there were others soiling their pants at the idea that the United Kingdom might break up. Jerry had not gone on public record – and caution might prevail until he was safely Sir Jerry – with opinions he would happily express when mixing with free-thinkers. He didn’t, for instance, see anything except historical inevitability in the notion that the whole of Ireland should be governed from Dublin. If the Scots wanted to declare independence and enter Europe as a sovereign state, then Jerry – who in his time had worked with both the Scotland For Scots campaign and the Union Forever lads, and was well-placed to see all the arguments – then Jerry would not stand in their way. Ditto Wales, for that matter.

  But in his view you could – and should – be able to embrace time and change and age without becoming a historical depressive. He had been known on certain occasions to compare the fair land of Britain to the noble discipline of philosophy. When the study and elaboration of philosophy had begun, back in Greece or wherever, it had contained all sorts of skill-zones: medicine, astronomy, law, physics, aesthetics, and so on. There wasn’t much the human brain churned out which wasn’t part of philosophy. But gradually, down the centuries, each of these various skill-zones had spun off from the main body and set up on its own. In the same way, Jerry liked to argue – and did so now – Britain had once held dominion over great tracts of the world’s surface, painted it pink from pole to pole. As time went by, these imperial possessions had spun off and set themselves up as sovereign nations. Quite right, too. So where did that leave us now? With something called the United Kingdom which, to be honest and facing facts, didn’t live up to its adjective. Its members were united in the way that tenants paying rent to the same landlord were united. And everyone knew that leaseholds could be turned into freeholds. But did philosophy cease to address life’s central problems just because astronomy and its chums had set up house elsewhere? By no means. You could even argue that it was able to concentrate better on the vital issues. And would England ever lose her strong and unique individuality established over so many centuries if, just for the sake of argument, Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland decided to bugger off? Not in Jerry’s book.

  ‘Tits,’ said Sir Jack remindingly.

  ‘My point. Quite. You have to face facts. This is the third millennium and your tits have dropped, baby. The days of sending a gunboat, not to mention Johnny Redcoat, are long gone. We have the finest army in the world, goes without saying, but nowadays we lease it for small wars approved by others. We are no longer mega. Why do some people find that so hard to admit? The spinning jenny is in a museum, the oil is drying up. Other people make things cheaper. Our friends in the City still coin it, and we grow our own food: we are modest capitalists with corn. Sometimes we are ahead of the game, sometimes behind. But what we do have, what we shall always have, is what others don’t: an accumulation of time. Time. My keyword, you see.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘If you’re an old geezer in his rocker on the porch, you don’t play basketball with the kids. Old geezers don’t jump. You sit and make a virtue of what you have. And what you also do is this: you make the kids think that anyone, anyone can jump, but it takes a wise old buzzard to know how to sit there and rock.

  ‘There are some people out there – classic historical depressives in my book – who think it’s our job, our particular geopolitical function, to act as an emblem of decline, a moral and economic scarecrow. Like, we taught the world how to play cricket and now it’s our duty, an expression of our lingering imperial guilt, to sit back and let everyone beat us at it. Balls, as it were. I want to turn around that way of thinking. I bow to no-one in my love of this country. It’s a question of placing the product correctly, that’s all.’

  ‘Place it for me, Jerry.’ Sir Jack’s eyes were dreamy; but his voice lustful.

  The consultant to the elect helped himself to another thumbful of snuff. ‘You – we – England – my client – is – are – a nation of great age, great history, great accumulated wisdom. Social and cultural history – stacks of it, reams of it – eminently marketable, never more so than in the current climate. Shakespeare, Queen Victoria, Industrial Revolution, gardening, that sort of thing. If I may coin, no, copyright, a phrase, We are already what others may hope to become. This isn’t self-pity, this is the strength of our position, our glory, our product placement. We are the new pioneers. We must sell our past to other nations as their future!’

  ‘Uncanny,’ muttered Sir Jack. ‘Uncanny.’

  Pa-pa-pa-pa pum pum pum went Sir Jack as Woodie, cap under arm, opened the limo door, ‘Pum pa-pa-pa-pa pumm pumm pumm. Recognize it, Woodie?’

  ‘Could it be the mighty Pastoral by any chance, sir?’ The chauffeur still pretended a little uncertainty, earning his employer’s nod and a further display of connoisseurship.

  ‘Awakening of serene impressions upon arriving in the country. Some translators say “happy”; I prefer “serene.” Meet me at The Dog and Badger in two hours.’

  Wood drove off slowly towards the rendezvous at the other end of the valley, where he would pay the pub landlord to give his employer drinks on the house. Sir Jack straightened the tongues of his walking boots, hefted his blackthorn stave from hand to hand, then stood squeezing out a long slow fart like a radiator being bled. Satisfied, he tapped his stick against a stone wall regular as a Scrabble board, and set off through the late-autumn countryside. Sir Jack liked to speak in praise of simple pleasures – and did so annually as Honorary President of the Ramblers’ Association – but he also knew that no pleasures were simple any more. The milkmaid and her swain no longer twirled the maypole while looking forward to a slice of cold mutton pie. Industrialization and the free market had long since disposed of them. Eating was not simple, and historic recreations of the milkmaid’s diet involved the greatest difficulty. Drink was more complicated nowadays. Sex? Nobody except dunderheads ever thought that sex was a simple pleasure. Exercise? Maypole-dancing had become work-out. Art? Art had become the entertainment business.

  And it was all a jolly good thing too, in Sir Jack’s opinion. Pa-pa-pa-pa pum pum pum. Where would Beethoven be if he were living today? Rich, famous, and under a good doctor, that’s where. What a shambles it must have been that December night in Vienna. 1808, if memory served. Bloody hopeless patrons, under-rehearsed players, a dim and shivering audience. And which bright spark imagined it a good idea to premiere the Fift
h and the mighty Pastoral on the same night? Plus the fourth concerto? Plus the Choral Fantasia. Four hours in an unheated hall. No wonder it was a disaster. Nowadays, with a decent agent, a diligent manager – or better still, with an enlightened patron who might dispel the need for these grubbing ten-per-centers … A figure who would insist on adequate rehearsal time. Sir Jack felt for the mighty Ludwig, he truly did. Pa-PA-pa-pa-pa-pum-diddy-um.

  And even a pleasure as supposedly simple as walking had its complications: logistic, legal, sartorial, philosophical. No-one just ‘walked’ any more, strode for striding’s sake, to fill the lungs, to make the body exult. Perhaps no-one ever really had, except a few rare spirits. Just as he doubted whether in the old days anyone had ever really ‘travelled.’ Sir Jack had interests in many leisure organisations, and was sick to death of the self-opinionated claim that genteel ‘travel’ had been superseded by vulgar ‘tourism.’ What snobs and ignoramuses the complainers were. Did they imagine all those old-style travellers on whom they fawned were such idealists? That they hadn’t ‘travelled’ for much the same reasons as today’s ‘tourists’? To get out of England, to be somewhere else, to feel the sun, to see strange sights and stranger people, to buy things, to quest for the erotic, to return home with souvenirs and memories and boasts? Exactly the same in Jack’s book. All that had happened since the Grand Tour was the democratization of travel, and quite right too, as he regularly told his shareholders.