he says nothing, only chukka-chukks the clove on the chopping
board with his own paring knife. From deep in the recesses of the
Baldwins’ large hilltop house comes the unmistable yapping of the
Simpsons, and for an instant he sees himself: adipose, jaundiced,
naked – wandering through a dooo-doo-doo-do-d’ two-dimensional
world not unlike this one. There will be children watching – the
Baldwins have a brace … possibly three. If the Butcher’s ever in real
danger of blowing his cover, it’s in the presence of … junior spies.
He’ll be forty this year – an age at which even the most committed
of bachelors begins to be stripped bare by mortal anxieties, so chucks
chins, tousles hair, hands out bigger tips – all preparatory to dutiful
insemination. The Butcher sips the vagina of Sally – his longest-growing
beard – as any connoisseur might savour the nose of a
grand cru – but the information he seeks concerns progesterone
and estrogen levels. He hears Sally’s laughter now – the trying-too-hard
cluck of the seriously broody. That’s your Sally, isn’t it, Jonathan?
Vron Baldwin says, with an irritating emphasis on “your”. Yes, the
Butcher concedes, and, glancing at the kitchen clock – a doubly
predictable Swiss Railways Mondaine – wonders who the Baldwins’
other guests will be. A couple of Nick’s colleagues will attend,
no doubt. It’s been over two years since their great defeat – and it’s
amusing enough to observe some of them relaxing into opposition
by becoming moister and more heterodox. It’s the wives who tend to
be the most absorbent – at well-set tables in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire
the Butcher has heard the words as a feminist spoken with
no irony whatsoever. (You’ve also heard colleagues weferred to as
gay with little or no opprobium attached – but that’s something you
don’t like to dwell on, or to acknowledge at all.) Can I have a go?
Sally says, making her entrance behind a boy of about eight …
Sam, possibly – or Arthur? who’s manipulating the levers of a remote
controller, so sending a model car racing across the phone-box-red
Amtico, round the massive, granite-topped kitchen island and out
the far door. Dear Sally … he sees her as she was at dawn, arranged,
naked and bamboozled on the tightly tucked five-hundred-thread-count
dais of his chopping block, her paler and depilated pubic
triangle a point of maximum vulnerability, her Lanzarote legs bent
back. What was it Kins had called her? A sporty girl – that’s right: a
sporty girl. His euphemism for a girl limber enough to be bent any
which way … without disturbing the Cindy-perfection of her hair.
Longest-growing beard, Sally is – and consequently ticklish … Two
steps and she’s on him, her lips nuzzling his ear, her pearlescent
teeth nipping its lobe, her Prosecco breath whispering, That
man Fiddes, Jonathan, such a bloody bore – I’ve been forced to play
with the children! She scampers away and strikes an illustrative
pose in the doorway: one leg cocked at the knee, a finger to her
pouting bottom lip. She’s wearing long white ribbed socks, a pleated
navy skirt, a pale blue linen blouse and a nautical scarf – and, as
she weighs anchor and sets off in the child’s wake, the Filipina
marooned on the kitchen island cannot prevent her entirely justifiable
expression of … contempt. Whatever the wipeable, durable and
impermeable character of contemporary kitchen worktops, there
remains a crack in everything … through which … the derision gets
in. How old precisely is Sally? To say forty if she’s a day would be to
make of yourself precisely the cliché she’s fast becoming: a sporty
girl, who, by all that’s right and proper, should long since have had
a pair of her own sporty girls, with blonde forelocks of their own,
whom she could trot along to gymkhanas and all the other dressage
of contemporary upper-middle-class English social existence. Of
course, it’s precisely, painfully, paradoxically because of this that
she’s the Butcher’s longest-growing beard: Sally fits in – she’s sporting
as well as sporty – her county accent precisely counterpointing
Ball shade – fitted we are, bespoke even: and perfectly coordinated
with the increasingly threadbare British class system. Cheltenham
Ladies’ College? Absolutely! But not a Registry Girl. Even for a
funambulist such as the Butcher, this would be too taut a tightrope
to toe – or strip the Rigby and Peller lingerie off … Oh! Really,
Jonathan – really! Her response to the subtle scrape of the bedside
table’s drawer is Pavlovian: a puckering-up of her shy little starfish,
long before the sharkish finger, slathered with Vaseline, angles in for
the kill –. – Bloody hell, Jonathan, I see the wife’s got you on cookhouse
patrol! Right on cue Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme appears in the
opulent kitchen, and stands twirling the handle of some Starck-new
corkscrew. Nick Baldwin is a lanky, twisted nervy figure – bald by
nature as well as name. Wouldn’t you, he asks, be interested in
doing something a little more interesting? Which is exactly what
Doctor Opie, the Butcher’s tutor for Sub-Saharan African Politics,
said to him at the end of their last tutorial before his finals, sitting
in his opulent study at Saint Antony’s. A little more interesting than
what? he replies now, as I did then. More interesting than chopping
bloody garlic! Baldwin spumantes – he’s had a few … he’ll have a
few more. The Butcher, while careful to control his own alcohol
intake in operational contexts (Of which this is surely one …),
Thank you, Squilly, nevertheless appreciates the effect it has on British
policymakers – without its heady fumes to cloud their judgement
they’d never do anything at all. Don’t just do something …
would be their motto … sit there! Honestly, Baldwin spittles on,
I don’t know why Vron insists on dragooning our guests into
performing these, ah, menial tasks … Possibly – the Butcher is
judicious – she thinks it’s a good idea for us to undertake at least
some of the practical work required to put meat on our tables – and
clean clothes on our backs for that matter … Every time Gawain
takes off his shirt, his lover marvels once again at the beauty of
his rumsteck. This is the moment the Butcher savours the most:
the piquant taste of Gawain’s skin as the tip of his tongue circles the
scattering of brown moles between his basses-côtes and his queue.
Fancifully, one hand firmly encircling Gawain’s penis, the other
stroking his back, the Butcher imagines them one and the same and
so cranes to kiss his blushing glans … You’re sounding distinctly
pink, Jonathan! Baldwin guffaws, and the Butcher answers his host
levelly: My father always made a point of polishing his own shoes –
he did it, ah … religiously. On religiously he runs his hand through
his thick, lustrously blue-black and perfectly
coiffed hair – a subliminal
command Baldwin responds to by smoothing his own
smoothness. This purely physical act encodes the secret message
of … superiority – we’re devious, aren’t we, Squills … (I prefer to
think of it as good tradecraft, Butch). Explain? (It’s not just her
accent you prize Sally for, Butch.) Go on. (Every time you sneak
into White’s, the Beefsteak or the House of Lords tea room …)
Sensational crumpets … (… you’re dangling beneath her, and the
cyclopean knob-head standing guard feels the cashmere back of just
another Fighting Ram.) Cashmere comes from goats, I believe, Squills.
(Whatever …) Whatever, indeed. – The Butcher looks up at his
host. He’s been in meetings at which Baldwin has been present –
just another of the semi-conscious drones the Butcher’s introduced
to as “a friend” (A friend indeed!), and thereafter referred to – as
friends usually are – solely by his Christian name … Jonathan,
perhaps you’ve something to add? There are, of course, those at the
EssEyeEss, at the EffSeeOh – in fact, throughout AitchEm-Gee
– who know De’Ath’s pater was … a bit of a pinko, while his
mother, despite all her striving, remains very much … bottom
drawer. Then again, it’s those selfsame Westminster Village gossips
who also know his grandfather was Sir Albert De’Ath – Sirbert to
his intimates (not that he had any beyond the family), at one time
Chairman of the Modern Churchmen’s Union, a lay preacher and a
mandarin of unimpeachable standing. Sirbert had been responsible
for shell production at the Woolwich Arsenal during the first show,
then, as Beaverbrook’s permanent undersecretary, oversaw aircraft
production throughout the second. As a child, the Butcher was
always a little perplexed by the obvious pride Kins displayed when
referring to his father’s KayGee – it sat oddly with his professed
egalitarianism. But, as the Butcher grew, acquiring his own sensitivities,
he began to understand that even the most pacific English
vegetarians retain a lust for blue-blood … just as the English upper
class are always gagging for cockney claret. Rightly so, since without
regular infusions they’re ever in constant risk of being choked by the
ingrowing branches of their own … family trees. That his grandfather
had been a Knight of the Garter – a member of a select
band, numbering only twenty-four at any one time, and personally
appointed by the Sovereign – would’ve buoyed the Butcher up as
well, were it not that every time it reoccurred to him he saw this
same childish vision: Sirbert, half naked in some golf club changing
room, yanking up a thick, hand-knitted woollen sock and snapping
it into place with … a frilly band of elasticated white lace –. He was
a religious man, wasn’t he, Jonathan? For a moment the Butcher’s
flummoxed – who can Nick Baldwin be referring to? Moreover,
why such an intimate tone? As the years pass, and the Butcher’s
vast data-set grows exponentially, he occasionally has difficulties
with random access … and so for fractions of a second forgets the
precise tenor of long-standing relationships, whether professional
or only semi-so. He’s known Veronica Baldwin (née Prodger) since
they were at Oxford together – I punted her up the Cherwell a few
times, true enough (And wore her as a beard to the May Ball in
‘eighty). Thank you, Squilly. No wonder her bird-brained husband
knows about Kins’s slow-hand-clap Christianity. So, to Baldwin the
Butcher replies: Yes, fairly God-fearing – though he was rather
better at keeping his shoes immaculate than his … soul. Baldwin
laughs – a gurgling catarrhal laugh suggestive of … Macmillan
nurses to come – and spills out, All right for plonk, are you? Which
the Butcher sops up with a simple, Fine, thanks, before bending
back to his task – anything’s better than looking at Baldwin’s idea
of Sunday casuals: a pink shirt from Pink’s, equipped with white
collar and cuffs and savagely tucked into a pair of viciously ironed
black Levis, no arbiter elegantiarum, him. The Butcher thinks
of that cracked actor the PeeEmm. Richard dragged the Butcher
along to one of his Downing Street briefings … tepid, over-stewed
cafetière coffee and Duchy-fucking-Originals. Then, because TeeBee
was in a frightful rush (But really in order to spook the spooks, eh,
Butch …), he asked them to go with him in the car to Northolt.
The Butcher recalls TeeBee clambering up into the back of the
armoured Range Rover and arranging his mannish boy’s mush in
the best possible light … TeeBee and Richard carried on about
Kosovo – could they square the circle? Was it significant that
Khaled Sheik Mohammed was thought to be operating there?
Should Blix’s appointment at Unmovic be seen as a good … or a
bad thing? From time to time, one of them would turn to the
Butcher and ask his opinion – and he punctiliously obliged, while
TeeBee stared covetously at his two-button French cuffs. Once
or twice, the Butcher had thought he was about to ask where I’d had
my shirt made … (Fucking Charvet of course – he’s such a big girl’s
bloody blouse). Richard, by contrast, was utterly enthralled (And
enthwalled by how enthwalled TeeBee was by him – I think this
is the beginning of a beautiful friendship). Khaled and Kosovo …
The Butcher remembered then – remembers now – Gawain’s gruff
accounts of his YouEnn deployment almost a decade before: the
tight joinery of frozen corpses on the back of a lorry, blue tongues
stuck in bluer grooves … His SeeOh so pissed that one morning
out jogging he fell headlong into a ditch. The Fighting Rams had
been penned up in an abandoned paint factory. One night the Three
Degrees arrived to entertain the troops: Sheila Ferguson shoving
her spangly bits in all those hungry faces (When will we share
precious moments, eh?). Onanon went the world leader to his spymaster
– but the Butcher was more taken by the odd gyrations of
the PeeEmm’s security detail. The two other Range Rovers kept
over– and undertaking their own vehicle, round annaraound all the
way along the constipated Western Avenue. Force protection? More
like a suppository action, since all the other drivers shat themselves
struggling to get out of the way. TeeBee talked with his hands –
hammy gestures: riffling invisible cards, karate-chopping immaterial
bricks, pointing an adamant finger towards the heavens … he’ll
be at home there. The Butcher thought of the bubbles in foreign
stations – air-gapped little cubicles jacked up on bricks, old railway
sleepers – whatever was to hand. Inside, spooks, diplomats and
visiting pols would sit shit-stirring in the increasingly smelly atmosphere.
The Butcher sensed it’s like this for TeeBee even more than
most prime ministers: he inhabits a bubble-world wreathed in an
atmosphere poisonous to all but … sycophants. Usually, security
measures are designed to keep eyes an
d ears out – but for him
they were required more to keep his febrile self-regard … in. The
Butcher has been up close and personal with plenty of those who
wield power … or fantasise they do. In his own tidy, binary mind he
classifies them simply either as rulers … or as sheep. The sheep are
indeed a problem (They imagine they may safely graze, don’t they,
Butch?). Wo Regenten wohl regieren, Squills – although rather forgetting
it’s they who’re meant to be doing the regieren. But it hadn’t been
sheepishness that bothered the Butcher as, in the ulterior light of
the Hanger Lane underpass, he gazed upon TeeBee’s beautifully
glazed chops, but the sempiternal sheen of … sanctimony. He’d
seen it from afar – everyone has – but observing Richard, in thrall,
adjusting his donnish style to fit his idea of what TeeBee might
want in a spymaster – all hit-this, cut-that, thrust-there – the
Butcher had been really rather alarmed … Never more so than when
the PeeEmm, in response to a particularly pressing query … It’s
plausibly deniable – can we go ahead? … which related to one of the
Butcher’s own assets, graciously inclined his head (Adjusting his
bloody halo …) and checked to see how this looked in one of the
wing-mirrors before answering. The Butcher, seeing TeeBee groping
blindly forward into the unredeemable future, gripped by the
delusion that all is perfectly visible … in the searchlight of Providence,
silently sing-songed, There may be trouble a-head… — Oh, is that
the time? Nick Baldwin’s returned, and the Butcher thinks: if
the Tories ever want to get back to Number Ten they’ll have to
haul their fashion sense kicking and screaming into the new millennium
… You better get a move-on with that garlic, Jonathan,
Baldwin says superfluously, Vron wants the lamb in toot-sweet …
Yes, time is indeed of the essence: when the Firm made its move
from Century House, Cumming’s clocks went with them. Now,
when the Butcher goes to see Richard in his bland new sanctum,
the spymaster’s own rapidly ageing face sags in amongst all these
silently ticking ones: I’m very glad you could make some time to see
me, Jonathan, Richard had said earlier that week – and the Butcher
replied: Timing is my business, Richard … Which was true