Saturday is the nanny’s day off, otherwise she would already have appeared to do that.
Sort of engrossed in the Lego now, István persists with it for a while longer and then, after a surprised look at his watch, takes Jacob upstairs.
While the tub is filling he asks him if he enjoyed his party.
“Yes,” Jacob says.
“Was fun, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Jacob says again.
“What was your favorite part?”
Taking the question very seriously, Jacob thinks for a few seconds and then says it was probably the treasure hunt.
“Yeah, I liked that too,” István tells him, testing the water with his hand.
While Jacob is in the bath, István tidies his room, picking toys up from the floor and putting them away, and arranging the stuffed animals on the pillows.
Jacob is just putting on his pajamas when István’s mother arrives with the warm milk.
That happens every night.
Jacob doesn’t like the warm milk.
István’s mother insists on it though.
“Does it have to be warm?” he asks her.
“Yes, it does,” she says.
“Why?”
“It just does. Now drink it.”
She’s stricter with him than István is.
“Will you tell me a story?” Jacob asks. The question isn’t addressed to her. It’s addressed to his father.
“A story?” István says.
“Yes,” Jacob says.
“What sort of story?”
“About when you were a soldier.”
“When I was a soldier?” István says, seating himself next to the bed.
His mother is still there, waiting for the empty glass.
Since Jacob found out that István was once a soldier he has been keen to hear more about it.
Slightly unwillingly at first, István told him a few things.
“What about it?” he says now.
“Just anything.”
“Drink the milk,” István’s mother says.
Jacob looks at his father, who nods.
“I don’t like it,” Jacob says.
“If you finish it,” István offers, “I’ll tell you a story about when I was a soldier.”
“A proper story?” Jacob wants to know.
István smiles. “What do you mean, a proper story?” he asks.
“At least five minutes.”
“Okay.”
“And new material.”
“New material?”
“Yes.”
“You mean something you haven’t heard before?”
Jacob nods.
“Okay,” István agrees, and while Jacob takes the milk in two or three unenthusiastic swallows he tries to think of something to tell him.
He ends up describing the day they went to Al-Suwaira, the day they took water to the Ukrainians there.
“Was anyone hurt?” Jacob asks.
“A few people,” István tells him.
“Was anyone killed?”
István shakes his head.
“Were you hurt?” Jacob wants to know.
“No,” István says. “I wasn’t hurt. I was fine.”
“And then what happened?”
“We fought them off, and went on.”
“To deliver the water?”
“That’s right. Only some of the tankers had holes in them,” István says.
“Bullet holes?”
“Yes.”
Jacob laughs at that for some reason.
“Why is it funny?” István asks him, smiling.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“That was more than five minutes.”
“Can I be a soldier when I grow up?” Jacob asks.
“If you want,” István says. “I don’t think you should be, though.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t.”
“What should I be, then?”
“I don’t know. What do you want to be?”
Jacob takes a few moments to think about it. “A fireman,” he says.
The Lego set, obviously. István smiles. “Yeah?”
With his head on the pillow, Jacob nods.
“Okay,” István says, still smiling at him, and enjoying the fact that he knows very well that his son will not be a fireman, that he’ll be something altogether more exalted than that. When he himself was Jacob’s age, of course, it would have seemed like an appropriate ambition for him, something that might actually happen, and part of the enjoyment he experiences now is to do with the feeling of progress involved in knowing that jobs like fireman have dropped out of the field of possibility for his family. Already he sometimes idly wonders what his son will actually be, what position he will actually occupy in the world. There seems to be no limit to what is possible there. And whose achievement is that, he thinks, turning off the light and slipping quietly out of the room, if not his own?
Sometimes he picks Jacob up from school himself. The school isn’t far from his office. It’s a five-minute walk along the river. Jacob is always happy to see him when he appears there at the end of the day, when he surprises him by not being the nanny, or Samuel in the Mercedes.
Sometimes, when the weather is nice, they walk in Battersea Park for a while, and sometimes they just make their way home across the bridge.
Arriving on the Chelsea side Jacob often wants to stop and look at the statue of the boy and the dolphin that’s there, on a promontory of paving stones at the end of Oakley Street.
He seems fascinated by that.
Once he asked István why the boy was naked.
“I don’t know,” István said.
Occasionally, if they feel like walking some more, they’ll stroll up to the King’s Road and do some shopping.
One afternoon, when the two of them are walking in Battersea Park, Jacob says, “Can we get a dog?”
“You want a dog?” István says.
“Yes.”
“We can think about it, I suppose. What sort of dog do you want?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about that one?” István points to a brown Labrador with a stick in its mouth, walking toward them. “Do you like that one?”
Jacob nods and asks the owner of the Labrador if he can pat it.
The owner, an older lady, says unsmilingly that he can.
She and István exchange nods.
Jacob pats the dog’s head.
“Say thank you,” István says.
“Thank you,” Jacob says to the lady, and then they move on, progressing slowly along one of the main axes of the park, an asphalt path lined at intervals with the massive bulbous trunks of plane trees.
Seeing someone stoop to pick up dogshit István says, “You have to do that, you know. If you have a dog.”
Jacob makes a face.
“You have to,” István tells him.
“Why?”
“Otherwise the whole park would be… you know.”
“What?”
“There’d be dog poo everywhere.”
“No there wouldn’t,” Jacob says.
“Yes there would.”
“The rain would wash it away.”
“Well yeah, maybe eventually,” István says. “But before that the whole place would be… It would be horrible. So you have to pick it up.”
“I don’t want to do that,” Jacob says.
“If you have a dog you have to,” István tells him.
“Then I don’t want a dog.”
The way he says it makes István laugh. “Seriously?”
At that moment his phone rings.
“Yeah?” he says, answering it.
It’s Roddy, who says they may have a problem.
“What sort of problem?” István asks him.
“Have you seen the Times website?”
“No.”
Sounding very tense, Roddy tells him that there’s a story on there about István and the minister—about how István sat next to the minister at a party fundraiser, made a substantial donation to the party, and less than two months after that received expedited planning permission for a major property development in Rainham that had been discussed at the fundraising dinner. The expedited planning permission would potentially save the development millions of pounds in tax liabilities.
“Is that a problem?” István asks.
“Yes, it is,” Roddy says.
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yes,” István says.
Jacob is shouting for his attention.
István waves at him distractedly and listens while Roddy tells him how terrible it looks for him to be associated with a political scandal at this point, just when they’re trying to get the outside investors to formally sign up. The idea is that István will put in half of the initial investment, and that the other half will come from various outside investors. “I’ve already heard from a few of them,” Roddy says.