“You look worn out.”
“I am.”
There shouldn’t be any need to, but I try to convey a greater sense of melancholy than may be visible, just in case Saul hasn’t detected it.
“Alec, what is it?”
He switches the television off with the remote control. The image sucks into itself until it forms a tiny white blob, which then snuffs out.
“Bad news.”
“What? Tell me.”
“I’ve done a stupid thing. I handed in my notice to Nik.”
“That isn’t stupid. It’s about time.”
This irritates me. He always thought I was wasting away at CEBDO. Fiddling while Rome burns.
“I did it for the wrong reason. I did it because I was sure I was set at the Foreign Office.”
“That job you were applying for?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t get it?”
“No. I found out today.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t tell anyone else I was applying for it, did you?”
“No. Course not. You told me not to.”
I believe him.
“Thanks.”
“So what happened? Did you fuck up the exams?”
“Yeah. Toughest thing I’ve ever done.”
“You shouldn’t be disappointed. I’ve heard they’re like that. Hardly anyone gets through.”
“It’s more shame than disappointment. It’s as if my worst fears about myself have been confirmed. I thought I was clever enough to make a career out of it. It really seemed to make sense. I spent so long thinking I was good enough to do top-level work, but now it turns out I was just deluding myself.”
I don’t like admitting failure to Saul. It doesn’t feel right. But there’s an opportunity here to talk through a few things, in confidence, which I want to take advantage of.
“Well, I never knew why you wanted to join in the first place,” he says.
I drain the vodka.
“Because I was flattered to be asked.”
“To be asked? You never said anything about being asked. You didn’t say anything about anyone approaching you.”
Careful.
“Didn’t I? No. Well, I met someone at a dinner party at Mum’s. He’d just retired from the Diplomatic Service. Put me onto it. Gave me a phone number.”
“Oh.”
Saul offers me a cigarette, lights one of his own.
“What was his name?”
“George Parker.”
“And why did you want to join?”
“Because it was exciting. Because I wanted to do it for Dad. Because it beat ripping Czechs off for a living. I don’t know. This meant so much to me. I’ll never get a chance like that again. To be on the top table.”
The conversation dies now for a second or two. I don’t think Saul is really in the mood for it: I’ve come around uninvited on his day off.
“Listen,” he says. “I think you’re lucky not to have got in.”
This is exactly the wrong thing to say to me.
“Why? Why am I in any way lucky? This was my big chance to get ahead, to start a career.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think-”
“It’s been every day for four months.”
“I had no idea-”
“You’re not the only one who’s ambitious, you know. I have ambitions.”
“I didn’t say you didn’t.”
He is being defensive now, a little patronizing. My anger has unnerved him.
“I wanted to work abroad, to have some excitement. I wanted to stop pissing away my youth.”
“So what’s stopping you? Go out and get a different job. The Foreign Office isn’t the only organization that offers positions overseas.”
“What’s the point? What’s the point in a corporate job when you can get downsized or sacked whenever the next recession comes along?”
“Don’t exaggerate. Don’t just repeat what you’ve heard on TV.”
“Anyway, it’s too late. I should have done it straight out of LSE. That’s the time to spend two or three years working away from home. Not now. I’m supposed to be establishing myself in a career.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Look around, Saul. Everybody we knew at university did the job fair circuit, did their finals, and then went straight into a sensible career where they’ll be earning thirty or forty grand in a couple of years’ time. These were people who were constantly stoned, who never went to lectures, who could barely string a sentence together. And now they’re driving company cars and paying fifty quid a month into pension plans and ‘health insurance.’ That’s what I should be doing instead of sitting around waiting for things to happen to me. It doesn’t work that way. You have to make your own luck. How did they know what to do with their lives when they were only twenty-one?”
“People grow up.”
“Evidently. I should’ve gone into the City. Read law. Taken a risk. What was the point in spending four years reading Russian and business studies if I wasn’t going to use them?”
“Jesus, Alec. You’re twenty-four, for Christ’s sake. You can still do whatever you like. It just requires a bit of imagination.”
There’s a glimmer here of something hopeful, a zip of optimism, but the stubbornness in me won’t grasp it.
“If you could have just met some of the people I did the entrance exams with. To think that they could have got the job and not me. There was this one Cambridge guy. Sam Ogilvy. Smooth, rich, vacuous. I bet they took him.”
“What does it matter if they did? You jealous or something?”
“No. No, I’m not. He was…he was…” How to describe Ogilvy to Saul? In an uncomfortable way, they reminded me of each other. “What did that man on TV call Tony Blair? ‘A walking Autocue in a sensible suit.’ That’s exactly what this guy was like. In order to get anywhere these days we have to be like Sam Ogilvy. An ideas-free zone. A platitude in patent leather shoes. That’s what employers are looking for. Coachloads of Tony Blairs.”
There is a message from Hawkes on my answering machine when I get home at eight fifteen. Were it not for the fact that I have had four vodkas, I might be more surprised to hear from him.
“Alec. It’s Michael. I’m coming to London tomorrow and I suggest we get together for lunch. Have a chat about things. Give me a ring in the country.”
His voice sounds stern. He leaves a contact number and I say, “Yeah, whatever,” to the machine, but out of inquisitiveness scribble it down on a pad.
For dinner I microwave some pasta and watch television for an hour, unable to concentrate on much beyond the shock of SIS. The rejection begins to act like heartbreak. Just when I think I’ve found some respite, after six hours of soul-searching and self-pity, something triggers the pain again-a memory of Stevenson, of Rouse standing firm in the window. So many ideas and plans, so many secret aspirations that will now remain untested. I was absolutely prepared to live my life as a shadow of who I really am. Surely they saw that? Surely there was something I could have done for them? I cannot understand why I have been discarded with such speed and
