(London is all statues. Look at that one. Look at him up on his high horse. I wonder who he was. It says on the side. I can’t make it out. I wonder if he actually looked like he looks there, when he was alive. The Chaplin one didn’t look anything like Chaplin, not really. And the Shakespeare one, well, no way of knowing.)
(Still no Paul.)
(I wonder why they didn’t get to be people, like him, with faces and bodies, those women, they just got to be gone, they just got to be empty clothes.)
(Was it because there were too many girls and it had to be symbolic of them all?)
(But no, because there are always faces on the soldiers on war memorials, I mean the soldiers on those memorials get to be actual people, with bodies, not just clothes.)
(I wonder if that’s better, just clothes, I mean in terms of art and meaning and such like. Is it better, like more symbolic, not to be there?)
(Anthea would know.)
(I mean, what if Nelson was symbolised by just a hat and an empty jacket? Sometimes Chaplin is just a hat and boots and a walking stick or a hat and a moustache. But that’s because he’s so individual that you know who he is from those things.)
(Both our grandmothers were in that war. Those clothes on that memorial are the empty clothes of our grandmothers.)
(The faces of our grandmothers. We never even saw our mother’s mother’s face, well, only in photos we saw it. She was dead before we were born.)
(Still no Paul.)
That sign says Whitehall.
I’m on the wrong road.
(God, Imogen, can’t you do anything right?)
I better go back.
My ambition, Keith says, is to make Pure oblivion possible.
Right! I say.
(I hope I say it brightly enough.)
What I want, he says, is to make it not just possible but natural for someone, from the point of rising in the morning to the point of going to sleep again at night, to spend his whole day, obliviously, in Pure hands.
So, when his wife turns on his tap to fill his coffee machine, the water that comes out of it is administered, tested and cleaned by Pure. When she puts his coffee in the filter and butters his toast, or chooses him an apple from the fruit bowl, each of these products will have been shipped by and bought at one of the outlets belonging to Pure. When he picks up the paper to read at the breakfast table, whether it’s a tabloid or a Berliner or a broadsheet, it’s one of the papers that belong to Pure. When he switches on his computer, the server he uses is Pure-owned, and the breakfast tv programme he’s not really watching is going out on one of the channels the majority of whose shares is held by Pure. When his wife changes the baby’s diaper, it’s replaced with one bought and packed by Pure Pharmaceuticals, like the two ibuprofen she’s just about to neck, and all the other drugs she needs to take in the course of the day, and when his baby eats, it eats bottled organic range Ooh Baby, made and distributed by Pure. When he slips the latest paperback into his briefcase, or when his wife thinks about what she’ll be reading at her book group later that day, whatever it is has been published by one of the twelve imprints owned by Pure, and bought, in person or online, at one of the three chains now owned by Pure, and if it was bought online it may even have been delivered by a mail network operated by Pure. And should our man feel like watching some high-grade porn, — if you’ll excuse me, ah, ah, for being so crude as to suggest it –
I nod.
(I smile like people suggest it to me all the time.)
— on his laptop or on his phonescreen on the way to work, while he keeps himself hydrated by drinking a bottle of Pure’s Eau Caledonia, he can do so courtesy of one of the several leisure outlets owned, distributed and operated by Pure.
(But I am feeling a bit uneasy. I am feeling a bit disenchanted. Has Keith driven me all this way out of London in a specially-chauffeured car to this collection of prefab offices on the outskirts of a New Town just to give me a Creative lecture?)
And that’s just breakfast, Keith is saying. Our Pure Man hasn’t even reached work yet. That’s just the opener. There’s the whole rest of the day to come. And we’ve only touched on his wife, only skimmed the surface of his infant. We haven’t even begun to consider his ten-year-old son, his teenage daughter. Because Pure Product is everywhere. Pure is massive throughout the global economy.
But most important, Pure is pure. And Pure must be perceived by the market as pure. It does what it says on the tin. You get me, ah, ah?
Imogen, Keith, yes, Keith, I do, I say.
Keith is walking me from prefab to prefab, holding forth. There seems to be almost nobody else working here.
(Maybe they’ve all gone home. It’s seven p. m., after all.)
(I wish there were at least one or two other people around. I wish that chauffeur bloke had stayed. But no, he pulled out of the car park as soon as he dropped me off.)
(The angle the sun is at is making it hard for me to do anything but squint at Keith.)
Right, Keith, I say
(even though he hasn’t said anything else.)
(He isn’t in the least bit interested in the print-outs. I’ve tried bringing them into the conversation twice.)
… trillion-dollar water market, he is saying.
(I know all this.)
… planned takeover of the Germans who own Thames Water, naturally, and we’ve just bought up a fine-looking concern in the Netherlands, and massive market opportunities coming up with the Chinese and Indian water business, he says.
(I know all this too.)
Which is why, ah, ah, he says.
Imogen, I say.
Which is why, Imogen, I’ve brought you down here to Base Camp, Keith says.
(This is Base Camp? Milton Keynes?)
… putting you in charge of Pure DND, Keith says.
(Me! In charge of something!)
(Oh my God!)
Thanks, Keith, I say. What’s, uh — what exactly is —?
With your natural tact, he is saying. With your way with words. With your natural instinctual caring talent for turning an argument on its head. With your understanding of the politics of locale. With your ability to deal with media issues head-on. Most of all, with your style. And I’m the first to admit that right now we need a woman’s touch on the team, ah, ah. We need that more than anything, and at Pure we will reward more than anything your ability to look good, look right, say the right thing, on camera if necessary, under all pressures, and to take the flak like a man if anything goes pear-shaped.
(Keith thinks I’m overweight.)
We’ve stopped outside a prefab identical to all the others. Keith presses the code-buttons on a door and lets it swing open. He stands back, gestures to me to look inside.
There’s a new desk, a new computer set-up, a new chair, a new phone, a new sofa, a shining pot plant.
Pure Dominant Narrative Department, he says. Welcome home.
Pure —? I say.
Do I have to carry you over the threshold? he says. Go on! Take a seat at the desk! It’s your seat! It was purchased for you! Go on!
I don’t move from the door. Keith strides in, pulls the swivel chair out from behind the desk and sends it rolling towards me. I catch it.
Sit, he says.
I sit in it, in the doorway.
Keith comes over, takes the back of the chair, swivels it round and stands behind me
(which reminds me of what the boy used to do when we went to the shows at the Bught, on the waltzers, the boy who’d hold the back of the waltzer if there were girls in it then make us all laugh like lunatics by giving it an especially dizzying spin.)
Keith’s head is by my head. He is speaking into my right ear.
Your first brief, Keith is saying, is a piece replying to the article in the British-based Independent newspaper this morning, which you’ll have seen –