Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time (24 page)

Thank you for your most recent letter, Martin! Thank you a thousand times. And Germany, eh? The Fatherland! The Christmas Markets, the spiced wine and sauerkraut pastries. The lederhosen-clad girls and jolly fat
Bürgermeisters
. Ice skating on the old
autobahns
of Munich and Baden-Baden! It sounds wonderful. It sounds almost as wonderful as a winter weekend in Torquay. I hope you had a wonderful time.

Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about what you said about Beth. It is weird, isn’t it? The more I consider it, the weirder it is. The way she’s gone so weird over the fact that someone may have fancied me. Over the fact I told her about it. It’s almost as if it’s the telling that has upset her so much. And that doesn’t make any sense.

Why should she get so upset that I share that? Surely, as man and wife, we’re not supposed to keep secrets from each other. Surely, as man and wife, we should be all about sharing. Everything. Even the things we may not want the other to hear. Why should the fact I’m doing that be so difficult for her?

Beth is not the jealous type. Never has been. She’s never once suspected me of playing away – even knowing what my colleagues are like, even having met Harry the Dog and listened to his tales of debauchery and casual infidelities. When I went on a stag do last year she demanded to know all the details – not because she was worried I might misbehave, but because she wanted a good laugh.

(The stag party was in Berlin, Martin, on the weekend of Guy Fawkes’ night. The Fatherland! You could have been there at the same time as us last year! We may have drunk in the same bars! Although predictably, of course, we ended up in a strip bar – unpredictably, the strip bar also turned out to be a brothel (who knew prostitution was legal in Germany?). I remember one stripper/prostitute taking a particular shine to me, even after I’d run out of money. I told her I couldn’t pay for any more drinks, let alone anything else; she just shrugged, adjusted her bra strap (she was at least wearing a bra) and told me ‘Hey, that’s OK, I like you anyways. We chat, ja?’ So we chatted. As Harry the Dog and the rest of the boys ogled and groped and a few of them slipped away with the girls, me and my
fräulein
sat and chatted. Which was fine, of course… except that after about an hour I couldn’t think of anything else to say. So I ended up trying to explain that back in Britain that night there would be fireworks, bonfires, parties. She didn’t understand why. Have you ever tried to explain to a German stripper why the British celebrate a plot to blow up Parliament every year? It’s tricky, even before the language issues. ‘But this man is bad, ja?’ she said, frowning. ‘Is not a good thing to put a bomb in the government? In Germany this is a very bad thing.’ (Well yes, I had to concede, and yet nevertheless…)

Anyway, when I told Beth she thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. She thought it was brilliant. She told me I should pitch it as a TV show – how long can you engage foreign prostitutes in small talk about British cultural traditions before they get bored? It didn’t occur to her that I might have even thought about actually doing anything other than talking nonsense with the girl. She knew I wouldn’t.

So now… why is she suddenly being all jealous now?

I’ve been thinking. I’ve been thinking about Mr Blair. I don’t hear much about Mr Blair these days. Not since Halloween, not since that weekend away. Before then, he used to be all I ever heard about. His perfect house, his perfect opinions, his perfect child, his perfect parenting techniques. The way half the mums in the mums-and-babies groups used to go a little weak at the knees at his strong-yet-sensitive nappy-changing style.

But now… now Beth doesn’t mention him at all. Why do you think that is, Martin? Why would my wife suddenly stop talking about a man who she has previously been so keen to eulogise? Why would she then go so crazy when I mention I’d broken off a friendship because I suspected my friend had inappropriate feelings towards me? Are those two things connected? Am I missing something massive here? Am I not catching the real story, the real scoop?

I’ve been thinking. And I’m not sure I like the direction my thoughts are headed in. But then, perhaps I’m just being a journalist about it. Perhaps I’m being too tabloid. Looking for the scandal, searching for the conspiracy theory, paying too much attention to the whispers. It’s just that, well, recently, as we’ve seen, the whispers have tended to be right. The newsroom gossip, the outlandish theories, the hidden deceits – recently they’ve all turned out to be pretty well true.

You know what I’m going to do, Martin? I’m going to ask Train Girl about it. She knows her stuff where this kind of thing’s concerned. She’s clued up on the whole relationships thing. I’ll present it to her as a hypothetical, a friend at the office, a story I’m working on – and I’ll see what she makes of it.

Yes, that’s it. That’s the plan. Thanks, Martin! It’s so good to have you back – I feel like I can think properly again!

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
22.20 Premier Westward Railways train from London Paddington to Oxford, December 17. Amount of my day wasted: 17 minutes. Fellow sufferers: No regulars (Saturday, innit).

Martin! Old friend! Brace yourself, son, this is going to be a long one. It’s late at night on a stretch of track near Slough, we were late setting off, slow to get going, and now we’ve stopped altogether. We’ve got a lot to get through today, and (it seems) a lot of time to get through it together. So brace yourself. Hold tight.

We got a tip from the police today. A heads-up. Advance warning of a story that’s going to break around 11 tonight. Around about now, in fact. (The police do that just to annoy the papers, by the way. Make announcements so late, once the first editions have gone, once the night staff has settled down and is hoping for an uneventful shift. They save up their big ones until such a time as will inconvenience as many journalists as possible. I’ll tell you for nothing, Martin: there’s a few hacks are going to get unwanted, panicky calls tonight, just as they’re settling in for the evening; just as they’re contemplating bed, or last orders from the bar, or one more digestif before going home to relieve the babysitter. Though not us, obviously. Not anyone from the
Globe
. Not because we’ve got our heads-up, our courtesy call, but because it’s not a story we’re going to be reporting. It’s not a story we’re keen on telling.)

And what is the story? What’s the scoop? Tomorrow’s news today, Martin, is that Her Majesty’s constabulary are going to formally prosecute the
Globe
over the illegal accessing of civilians’ private data – the civilians specifically being the family, friends and associates of poor little Barry Dunn, that most high-profile victim of the notorious Beast of Berkhamsted. The Crown Prosecution Service has concluded that the law has indeed been broken and that it will, for want of a better phrase, see our asses in court.

The CPS reckons it’s got us bang to rights. And that will mean two court cases in simultaneous synchronicity. A war on two fronts. A pincer movement. On one flank, the petulant millionaires and their whining about the right to consequence-free bad behaviour, and on the other, a nation righteously (and correctly) outraged by the looting of a dead boy’s most private information.

Tricky. In fact, a nightmare. If the case against us is as strong as everyone seems to think it is, we’re going to get annihilated. Destroyed. The country’s most popular newspaper recast as public enemy number one? There will be a feeding frenzy. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

But then, things could be worse. (Could they? Really? Well… yes. Let’s take a step back and look with a little clarity here. Let’s get a little perspective. Yes, things definitely could be worse.) We could be in North Africa right now. We could be caught up in the latest developments there. And that really is a nightmare. They really have been annihilated, destroyed.

Happy Christmas, as somebody once said, war is over. The invasion, so swift, so laser-like in its infancy… and then so slow and dogged and brutal in its denouement, is finally concluded. The third flag in as many months (give or take a week or two) flutters above the tattered remains of the Imperial Palace. Neighbouring Regime is a neighbouring regime no longer: now it’s simply the regime.

And what have they got for their trouble? The capital comprehensively smashed to blocks the size of Lego bricks. The rubble piled so high not even the tanks could get in. The thick layers of concrete dust in the air like a fog. The terrible silence. Terrible in contrast to the awful noises of the attack before… but terrible also because there is no human sound. No crying, no screaming, no wailing, no groaning. No mewling, no moaning, no pleading, no feeble begging for mercy. No sound… because there’s nobody left to make a sound. That’s the terror of that silence.

And then, the new leader. Astride a tank, in full military fatigues. Arms raised and palms outstretched. Magnificently bearded and with aviator shades. Talking of peace and unity and a new stability for the whole region, and later, why not!, the whole continent! The new leader – and his plans to bulldoze the old order away (both old orders – the old old order and the shortlived new old order). Literally bulldoze it all away. Starting with the capital city, starting on Monday. He’s going to shovel everything up and shovel it all out and build a new city in its place. And with the rubble and the bricks and the sticks and the stones will doubtless be the bodies of the thousands of people who used to live there. And it doesn’t take a genius or a cynic or a tabloid journalist to work out that they’ll be bulldozed and shovelled up too. ‘Cleansing’, was the word he used. And we’ve heard that before, haven’t we?

And then the contrasting shots of the adoring crowds back in the mother country. The jubilant scenes in the streets and the squares. The desperate declarations of love for their glorious, triumphant leader. The banners, the huge posters, the guns fired in the air in celebration. A nation united in victory. A nation doubled in size. And any thoughts of ever trying any funny business ever again as comprehensively flattened as their newfound territory’s former capital.

So, yes. Things could be worse, I guess. When you look at the big picture. Things could definitely be worse. But it doesn’t mean things can’t be bad here too, right? There is no quantity theory of unhappiness. There are levels, sure. But things are still bad here too.

Oh, and you know what else? (I still have a few more minutes left of your time to use up tonight. Sorry about that, Martin: but then – you started it. You started it the moment this train stopped.) Talking of how bad things can get, I spoke to Train Girl. About the whole Mr Blair situation, I mean. I told her everything, except I changed the names to protect the innocent and guilty alike. I pretended it was a mate of mine worried about his wife’s sudden and irrational jealousy.

And do you know what she said? ‘This mate of yours? His wife is jealous because she’s been shagging this other feller on the side.’ That’s what she said.

‘Your mate’s wife is cheating on him,’ she said, with an authoritative nod of the head. ‘That’s why she’s acting so weird. Think about it. She’s there, having it away with this other guy, and although she feels bad about it, she doesn’t feel bad enough to stop shagging him. Until your mate goes and tells her how he had the chance to shag someone else himself and didn’t because he loves her. And what does that do? That makes her feel doubly bad. Super bad.

‘So how does she react? She takes it out on your mate. She tries to make him feel like he’s the bad guy here. And all because of her own guilt. All because he did what she couldn’t by turning his free shag down. It’s your basic guilty transference – she’s transferring onto him all the anger she unconsciously knows he should be feeling towards her. She’s not really furious with your mate; she’s furious with herself. But now she’s trapped.

‘In a weird way, you know,’ and this was said with a wink, ‘it would have been better all round if your mate had shagged his sure thing. At least then they would have been even-stevens. As bad as each other.’

So there you go. That’s not exactly the best news either, is it? Train Girl thinks Beth has been having it away with Mr Blair. Train Girl thinks my wife has been cheating on me with a
Guardian
-reading, tweed-wearing, latte-sipping, holier-than-thou Jericho socialist.

And you know what almost the worst bit is? I wasn’t surprised she thought that. Because I’ve been thinking the same. And even thinking about thinking about it makes me feel dizzy and blind and sick. Even thinking about thinking it drains my blood and raises my bile and fills me with reeling horror, with lurching panic.

What if it’s true, Martin? What if it’s actually true? What do I do then? You really want to know? You really want to know what I’d do? I’d kill him, that’s what I’d do. I’d kill the bastard.

Au revoir
!

Dan

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Re:
07.31 Premier Westward Railways train from Oxford to London Paddington, December 22. Amount of my day wasted: 10 minutes. Fellow sufferers: Train Girl, Guilty New Mum, Lego Head, Universal Grandpa.

Oh calm down, Martin, I’m not really going to kill him. I couldn’t kill someone. I couldn’t kill anyone. The truth is, I don’t know what I’d do. But don’t worry. I wouldn’t actually kill him.

Anyway. I haven’t done anything yet. I haven’t talked to Beth. I’ve just watched. I’ve watched, and listened, and made mental notes. Oh: and I looked at the messages on her mobile phone, too. Obviously. (There was nothing incriminating there.) I got into her Twitter account (likewise) and checked her Facebook (ditto). I haven’t cracked her Gmail account, but I’m sure I can. But still. My mind is not exactly what you might call at ease about it. I’m going to have to confront her with it.