‘I’m glad we never met here back then, El. I was thirty and you were what, eighteen? You needed to have your adventures. The timing would’ve been off.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but we could’ve made some sort of start.’
Which was exactly what he was thinking.
The power and the glory
The administrators of the Prix Mirabeau had seen fit to provide first-class tickets for the Eurostar, and so this attractive pair savoured a glass of champagne, and prepared themselves for red wine and red meat. He said,
‘Is life worth living on these terms? You know, if I could speak French I would’ve gone into that glass booth and told the writers to stop writing the murk novel and start writing the smirk novel.’
‘…I’m trying to think if there are any. Smirk novels.’
‘There’s plenty of smirk stuff in Nabokov. My striking if somewhat brutal good looks. The crazed beauties that lashed my grim rock. But it’s all ironic.’
‘There couldn’t be a smirk novel that plays it straight.’
‘I only know of one. By John Braine.’ Like Kingsley, John Braine was a lower-middle-class Angry Young Man (a journalistic label derived from John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger) who became increasingly reactionary as he got older and angrier (and richer). In his early and more successful years (Room at the Top, Man at the Top) he gained renown as an unusually noisy provocateur (‘I want to go back to Bingley’, South Yorkshire, ‘in an open car with two naked ladies covered in jewels’), but towards the end he became a much-feared drunk and drag (‘You ate me, daunt yer,’ he once told a silenced lunch gathering, ‘as I never went to university’). His smirk novel was his last, written as his dismal destiny loomed. Martin said,
‘We used to have a lot of fun, me and Kingsley, elaborating on Braine’s first page. We got it down to something like: My ravishing young mistress, Lady Aramintha Worcestershire, pulled the top sheet over her bulging breasts, sighed happily, and said, “It’s just not fair. You’re a world-famous novelist, adored by millions of readers. You dine at the choicest restaurants with the cream of the intellectual elite. You make a fine living simply on the strength of your intellect and your talent. And yet you have the body, and the stamina, of a young boy. It’s just not fair.” “Thanks, loov,” I said. And going on like that for three hundred pages. That’s a smirk novel.’
‘I think you told me. Isn’t there a good bit about bad reviews?’
‘Yeah. At some snobbo cocktail party a titled connoisseur says to him, So the critics weren’t very keen on your latest effort. And the hero says gruffly, Aye, no one was very keen on it – except the pooblic.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Hang on.’ He took his watch off and held a hand aloft. ‘Baghdad is two hours ahead of Paris. When I slice my hand through the air we’ll have Shock and Awe.’ He sliced his hand through the air. ‘Now it begins.’
They quietly returned to their books for an hour and then dinner started coming.
‘Hans Blix,’ he said, as they addressed their rather superior beefsteaks and quaffed the more than acceptable Bordeaux. ‘You know what I reckon it was? Hitch got too close to power.’ He chewed and sipped. ‘It’s dangerous stuff, power, and very infectious. And I wonder about his immunity to it.’*8
‘But now,’ said Elena, ‘we want our soldiers to be feted in the streets and pelted with rosebuds.’
‘Definitely. I hope they get some frat, too.’
‘Frat?’
‘Frat. There’s a funny footnote on frat in a Kingsley poem – about an army reunion. “ ‘Fraternisation’ between Allied troops and German women was forbidden by order of General Eisenhower in 1944. Phrases like ‘a piece of frat’ soon became current.” ’
‘Well, there’ll be no frat with Fetnab. And they’re not allowed any alcohol either. You and I will be very careful not to offend our Muslim hosts.’
‘Quite right too,’ he said. ‘But there’s bound to be a vast black market. Not in frat but in booze. They’ll find a way.’
‘On TV last night Hitch was all blue-eyed and doubt-free.’
‘Mm. People are saying he’s gone neocon. But I don’t think he’s changed at all. People don’t change. He’s basically still a streetfighting Trot.’
‘Then why’s he considering Bush–Cheney in 2004?’
‘I don’t know. I think he thinks Kerry won’t have his heart in it. Hitch wants regime change, but from the left. An anti-fascist crusade. He thinks Republicans are better at it. War.’
‘…I’m trying to remember something. Yes, Barney and Spot.’
There would in the end be quite a fuss about Barney and Spot – the president’s dogs. Or about the fact that he had been filmed playing with them. Bush quite testily complained that he shouldn’t have been filmed on the White House lawn, playing with Barney and Spot. Playing? Well, he wasn’t going to roll around with them, not on the eve of the invasion. Bush played with Barney and Spot like a taskmaster, as if he was training them or testing them. He played with Barney and Spot without the slightest amusement. And who can be unamused by their dogs?
‘He played with them as if he was saying, I can make you do this, I can make you do that. I can make this happen. Do you know what else I can make happen? Do you, Barney? Do you, Spot? Jesus, the way he walks. With his arse muscles tensed. The way he salutes – you know, when he gets off his helicopter. Bush doesn’t drink any more but he’s absolutely smashed on power. You’d think his dad might’ve had a word with him
