him much. His problem was even more banal than top-rack glossies. Now he was at the counter, sorting the pound coins from euros in his hand, with four newspapers under his arm, not one, as if excess in one endeavour might immunise him in another, and as he handed them across for their bar codes to be scanned, he saw at the edge of vision, in the array beneath the till, the gleam of the thing he wanted, the thing he did not want to want, a dozen of them in a line, and without deciding to he was taking one – so light! – and adding it to his pile, partly obliterating a picture of the prime minister waving from the doorway of a church.
It was a plastic foil bag of finely sliced potatoes boiled in oil and dusted in salt, industrialised powdered foodstuffs, preservatives, enhancers, hydrolysing and raising agents, acidity regulators and colouring. Salt and vinegar flavoured crisps. He was still stuffed from his lunch, but this particular chemical feast could not be found in Paris, Berlin or Tokyo and he longed for it now, the actinic sting of these thirty grams – a drug dealer's measure. One last jolt to the system, then he would never touch the junk again. He thought there was every chance of resisting it until he was on the Paddington train. He stuffed the bag in the pocket of his jacket, took up his burden of papers and his wheeled luggage and continued across the concourse. He was thirty-five pounds overweight. About his future lightness he had made many general resolutions and virtuous promises, often after dinner with a glass in his hand, and all parliamentary heads nodding in assent. What defeated him was always the present, the moment of vivid confrontation with the affirming tidbit, the extra course, the meal he did not really need, when the short-term faction carried the day.
The flight from Berlin was a typical failure. At the start, as he lowered his broad rear into his seat, barely two hours after a meaty Germanic breakfast, he was forming his resolutions: no drinks but water, no snacks, a green-leaf salad, a portion of fish, no pudding, and at the same time, at the approach of a silver tray and the murmured invitation of a female voice, his hand was closing round the stem of his runway champagne. A half-hour later he was ripping open the sachet of a salt-studded, beef-glazed, toasted corn-type sticklet snack that came with his jumbo gin and tonic. Then there was spread before him a white tablecloth, the sight of which fired some neuronal starter gun for his stomach juices. The gin melted his remaining resolve. He chose the starter he had decided against: quails' legs wrapped in bacon on a bed of creamed garlic. Then, cubes of pork belly mounted on a hill-fort of buttered rice. The word 'pavA©' was another of those starter guns: a paving slab of chocolate sponge encased in chocolate under a chocolate sauce; goat's cheese, cow's cheese in a nest of white grapes, three rolls, a chocolate mint, three glasses of Burgundy, and finally, as though it would absolve him of all else, he forced himself back through the menu to confront the oil-sodden salad that came with the quail. When his tray was removed, only the grapes remained.
He bought his ticket and settled himself at a table on the half-empty train. Sitting opposite was one of those young men in their thirties with shaved head, chubby face and gymnasium-thickened neck who were, to Beard's undiscerning eye, impossible to tell apart. This man, however, was distinguished by piercings in his ears. For some unacknowledged seconds there was an under-the-table negotiation, a polite ballet, for leg space. Then the younger man proceeded with the message he was tapping into his phone, and Beard, scanning the front pages, experienced the familiar mental narrowing of home-coming. These were surely the very papers he had read before he left, weeks before. Here were the same headlines, over the same photograph, asking the same question. When would Blair go? Tomorrow? Straight after the next election, assuming he won? A year in, or two, or after a whole fourth term? Was this not exactly the same number of Shia citizens in Baghdad, slaughtered by al-Qaeda as they queued to buy bread? That story apart (Beard was riffling through his pile), the tsunami had taken over a quarter of a million lives, which had raised for some, just as it had last month, the question of God's existence. Elsewhere, the country was, as ever, pronounced to be in ruins, its governance, finances, health service, justice and education systems, military, transport infrastructure and public morals in a state of terminal inanition. From habit, he looked out for climate-change articles. Nothing today. Solar? Nothing – but there would be soon.
He set the papers down on the seat beside him and attended to his palmtop, scrolling through the fifteen messages it had absorbed since his departure from Berlin Tegel. Fourteen related to his project. His American partner, Toby Hammer, confirmed that the documents were at Grosvenor Square. The ranch owner wanted his option money transferred to an account in El Paso and not the one in Alamogordo. The local Chamber of Commerce politely requested a 'cleaner' estimate of the number of jobs the installation would provide for the citizens of Lordsburg. Whenever he saw the name of that small town, his mood improved. He wanted to be there now, on its northern edge, gazing over the dazzling immensity towards the spot, out along the straight road to Silver City, where their work would begin. Lordsburg Holiday Inn wanted him to know that his booking next month was confirmed, in the usual room, and at a lower rate for a faithful customer. For the third time that month, a note from Jock Braby, wanting to meet. He would have heard the rumours of good results at Imperial and now he would be wanting some share of the success. And this, from the man who had arranged Beard's sacking from the Centre. An afterthought from Toby Hammer. He had found a cheap source of iron filings. Only one personal message: Don't forget dinner at 8. Main course is you. I love you, Melissa.
I love you. She had written and said this many times, but he had never said it back to her, not even in moments of abandon. And not because he thought he did not love her. He was never quite sure on that count. Long ago he had learned never to declare love to anyone. With Melissa he dreaded the question these three words of supernatural torque must raise. Would he commit to her for the rest of his life and father her child? She longed for the baby that circumstances had denied her. But his entire case history convinced him that if he went along with the plan, he was bound to bring disappointment to this artless, pretty young woman, who was eighteen years younger than him. She was at that age when a childless woman should be in a hurry. If he would not step up to perform his duties, he should bow out. She surely would need a period of adjustment, and then time to find a replacement. But she did not want him to go, and he could not bring himself to leave. And yet – to be an inadequate husband all over again, for the sixth time, to be father of an infant at sixty. Ridiculous regression!
It was agony to discuss the matter with her. The last occasion, in a restaurant in Piccadilly, she was wet-eyed when she said that she would rather not have a child than lose him. Unbearable. The stuff of agony-aunt columns. He could not believe her. If he really loved her, he thought, he should free her and leave her now. But he liked her and was weak. How could he refuse this improbable gift? Who else as young would take on so tenderly a man as faintly absurd, short, tubby, ageing, as scalded by public disgrace, corrupted by a whiff of failure, consumed by his cranky affair with sunbeams?
So he made the poorest choice of all. Barely a choice, more a kind of instinctual funk. Without quite cutting loose, he had kept his distance – he was working abroad anyway. He had seen other women, and all the while half hoped for and wholly dreaded the call she would make to tell him of the eager, talented buck prowling at the peripheries of her existence, about to make, or having just made, an entrance. And then, if he was weak enough, he would hurry back to defend what he would suddenly decide was his, and she would be grateful, the buck would be dispatched (the buck stops here!), the mess would remain, and he would be one step nearer the wrong decision.
He put away the palmtop, leaned back in his seat and half closed his eyes. Right before him on the table, shimmering through his barely parted lashes, were the salt and vinegar crisps, and just beyond the packet was a plastic bottle of mineral water belonging to the young man. Beard wondered whether he should be looking over the notes for his speech, but general travel fatigue as well as the lunchtime drinks had rendered him, for the moment, inert, and he believed he knew the material well enough, and on a card in his top pocket were various useful quotes. As for the snack, he wanted it less than he did, but he still wanted it. Certain of those industrial compounds might stir his metabolism into wakefulness. It was his palate, rather than his stomach, that was looking forward to the acidic tang of the dust coating each brittle slice. He had shown decent restraint – the train had been moving for several minutes now – and there was no good reason to hold back.
He pulled himself up in his seat and leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands propping his chin for several reflective seconds, gaze fixed on the gaudy wrapper, silver, red and blue, with cartoon animals cavorting below a Union Jack. So childish of him, this infatuation, so weak, so harmful, a microcosm of all past errors and folly, of that impatient way he had of having to have what he wanted instantly. He took the bag in both hands and pulled its neck apart, discharging a clammy fragrance of frying fat and vinegar. It was an artful laboratory simulation of the corner fish and chip shop, an enactment of fond memories and desire and nationhood. That flag was a considered choice. He lifted clear a single crisp between forefinger and thumb, replaced the bag on the table, and sat back. He was a man to take his pleasures seriously. The trick was to set the fragment on the centre of the tongue and, after a moment's spreading sensation, push the potato up hard to shatter against the
