Cork was asleep and the robots were silent. The keys lay in a heap before him. One by one he began threading them back on to the ring. Put together, he thought; construct. You will not go to bed until you are at least aware of the trail you must follow. The task of an intellectual, his fart-arsed tutor brayed, is to make order out of chaos. Define anarchy. It is a mind without a system. Please, teacher, what is a system without a mind? Taking a pencil he lazily drew a chart of the days of the week and divided each day in to panels of one hour. He opened the blue diary. Re-form the fragments, make of all the pieces one piece. You'll find him and Shawn won't. Harting Leo, Claims and Consular, thief and hunter, will hunt you down.
'You don't know anything about shares by any chance?' Cork enquired, waking with a start.
'No, I don't.'
'My query is, you see,' he continued, rubbing his pink eyes, 'if there's a slump on Wall Street and a slump in Frankfurt and we don't make the Market on this run, how will it affect Swedish steel?'
'If I were you,' Turner said, 'I'd put the whole lot on red and forget it.'
'Only I have this firm intention,' Cork explained. 'We've got a bit of land lined up in the Caribbean-'
'Shut up.'
Construct. Put your ideas on a blackboard and then see what happens to them. Come on, Turner, you're a philosopher, tell us how the world goes round. What little absolute will we put into Harting's mouth, for instance?
Facts. Construct. Did you not, after all, my dear Turner, abandon the contemplative life of
the academic in favour of the junctional life of the civil servant? Construct; put your
theories to work and de Lisle will call you a real person.
Mondays first. Mondays are for invitations out. Buffet parties are favoured, de Lisle had told him in an aside at luncheon; they eliminate the pains of placement. Mondays are reserved for away matches. England plays the wogs. Away to a different kind of slavery. Harting was essentially a second division man. The minor Embassies. Embassies with small drawing-rooms. The B team played away on Mondays.
'- and if it's a girl, I reckon we could get a coloured nanny, an Amah; she could do the teaching, up to O-level at least.'
'Can't you keep quiet?'
'Provided we have the funds,' Cork added. 'You can't get them for nothing, I'm sure.'
'I'm working, can't you understand?'
I'm trying, he thought, and his mind drifted in to other fields. He was with the little girl in the corridor, whose full unpainted lips faded so reluctantly in to the feathery skin; he imagined that long appraising stare upon his nascent paunch and he heard her laughing as his own wife had laughed: Alan darling, you're supposed to take me, not fight me. It's rhythm, it's like dancing, can't you understand? And Tony's such abeautiful dancer, Alan darling, and I shall be a little late tonight, and I shall be away tomorrow, playing an a way match with my Monday lover. Alan, stop. Stop! Alan, please don't hit me! I'll never touch him again, I swear. Until Tuesday.
Harting, you thief.
Tuesdays were for entertaining at home. Home is a Tuesday; home is having people in. He made a list of them and thought: it's worse than Blackheath. It's worse than her bloody mother fighting for her fragment of power; it's worse than Bournemouth and seed cake for the minister; it's worse than black Sundays in Yorkshire and weddings timed for six o'clock tea; it is a custom-built, unassailable preventive detention of vacuous social exchange. The Vandelungs (Dutch)... the Canards(Canadian)... the Obutus(Ghanaian)... the Cortezanis(Italian)... the Allertons, the Crabbes, and once, sure enough, the Bradfields; this happy band was mingled with no fewer than forty-eight accountable bores defined only by their quantity: the Obutus plus six... the Allertons plus two.... the Bradfields alone. You gave them your full attention, didn't you? 'I understand he maintains a certain standard there.' Champagne and two veg that night. Plover's eggs paid for by the Russian taxpayer. His wife interrupted him: darling, why don't we go out tonight? The Willoughbys won't mind, they know I loathe cooking and Tony adores Italian food. Oh sure, sure: anything to please Tony.
'- And if it's a boy,' Cork said, 'I'll take it on myself. There must be some facilities for boys, even in a place like that. I mean it's a paradise, isn't it, specially for teachers.'
Wednesday was welfare. Ping-pong night. Sing-song night. The sergeants' mess: 'Have a little something in that gin and whisky, Mr Turner, sir, just to give it bite. The boys say one thing about you, sir, and I'm sure you won't mind me repeating it, sir, seeing it's Christmas: Mr Turner, they say - they always give you the Mister, sir, it's not something they do for everyone -Mr Turner is tough; Mr Turner is firm. But Mr Turner is fair. Now, sir, about my leave...' Exiles night. A night for worming an inch or two further in to the flesh of the Embassy; come back, little girl, and just slip off those jeans. A night strictly for business. He studied the engagements in detail and thought: you really did work for your secrets, I will admit. You really hawked yourself, didn't you? Scottish Dancing, Skittles Club, Exiles Motoring, Sports Committee. Sooner you than me, boy; you really believed. I'll say that for you too. You really went for goal, didn't you? You kept the ball and you went through the lot of them, you thief.
Which left - since the weekends were not marked with anything but references to gardening and a couple of trips to Hanover -which left Thursdays.
Guilty Thursdays.
Draw a box round Thursday, telephone the Adler and find out what time they lock up. They don't. Draw another box round that box, measuring one and a half inches by half an inch, and decorate the margins in between with sinuous snakes; cause their forked tongues to lick suggestively at the sweet Gothic curves of the letter T, and wait for the throbbing of a tormented head to be assumed in to the waking drumbeat of the cypher machines. And the result?
Silence. Bloody silence.
The result is a Thursday shrouded in sexual mystery, tantalised by abstinence. A Thursday surrounded by meticulous entries written in a swollen, boring mayoral hand by a man with nothing to do and a lot of time to do it in. 'Remember Mary Crabbe's coffee grinder,' the worshipful mayor of Turner's home town in Yorkshire warned his fortunate biographer; remember to grind Mary Crabbe, you thief. 'Speak to Arthur about Myra's birthday,' Mr Crail the Minister, well known throughout all Yorkshire for the inanity of his sermons, whispered in a benevolent aside; 'Anglo-GermanSociety Buffet Luncheon for Friends of the Free City of Hamburg,' 'International Ladies Subscription Luncheon, Costumes of All Nations, DM. 1500. Incl.
wine,' the Master of Ceremonies proclaimed, puffing his Mess- Night capitals over the lined pages. And make a mental note to ruin Jenny Pargiter's career. And Meadowes' retirement. And Gaunt? And Bradfield? And who else a long the path? Myra Meadowes? You wrecker, Harting.
'Can't you turn those bloody things off?'
'I wish I could,' said Cork. 'Something's up, don't ask me what. Personal for Bradfield decypher yourself. Following for Bradfield by hand of officer... it must be his bloody birthday.'