‘Where are the sausage rolls?’ someone shouted. Another pocket of laughter erupted. For a split second Moose felt an incandescent urge to turn a gun on everyone in the room.
‘I’m not so familiar with the divorce benefits here,’ Marina said.
‘What?’
‘The sweet FA. I don’t know what this involves.’
Was she being funny?
‘I’ve spent years pursuing dead ends, Mari. What I need is —’
‘A photograph in the paper with Margaret, and some glowing endorsement. I know, and I do not think you are a mediocre dad.’
Photograph. The word was triggering a memory. ‘Your exhibition, Mari. The picture of the pig and the islands. Tell me I haven’t missed it.’
‘Not yet. Don’t worry.’
‘God. Good. I want to know the date. And this is not ego, Mari. This is me trying to get a career going. Why? So Freya can go through university without having to stack shelves. So she can get an education and have a good life. Corny but true.’
‘Does she actually want to go to a university, though? Is that her idea of a good life?’
‘She’ll go eventually. She’s smarter than all of us put together.’
‘So smart she will do what is expected of her, as women must.’
‘Look, Mari, I don’t expect you to understand. If I’d had certain opportunities that Freya has. If I had had the encouragement that —’
‘I am hearing a lot of I here,’ Marina said, and in saying it sounded so terrifyingly like his mother that Moose wondered, briefly, whether he could ever again bear to fantasise about rolling around with her on a sunny square of grass in … Somerset? Dorset? Which got better weather? OK: he could, he could.
He was feeling a little dizzy now, light-headed, regretful about that last glass of Coke. The doctors hadn’t said anything about Coke. They’d just advised him to avoid cigarettes and ‘sugary and fatty foodstuffs’. How much sugar could there be in a modern glass of Coke? Just a dash, these days, surely.
‘Mari,’ he said, ‘I admit it’s partly personal. I feel … I just feel … I feel like if I could do one perfect thing, you know, I’d be happy.’
In response Marina began to say something about daughters, but at that moment Moose saw, on the far side of the room, the familiar red jacket of the Captain. He seemed, oh God, to be talking to the Secretary of State for Education and Science. How had he slipped past security?
‘I’m going to have to deal with this, Mari. Sorry. He’s cornered Sir Keith.’
A gap opened up between Patrick Jenkin and Kenneth Baker. Baker was heading for great things, people said; he’d need to catch a moment with him later. He took the gap, closed in on the red jacket. The injection of pace left him breathless.
‘Your Excellency,’ he said to Sir Keith, which was definitely the wrong form of address.
Keith Joseph stared at him, a face full of tortured intensity. His features thinned into a wince and he wiped the wince with a conference-blue napkin.
The Captain whispered something to Sir Keith and Sir Keith said, ‘We’ll come back to that, we will. Have the two of you met?’
‘Of course,’ Moose said. ‘Of course.’ He slung a friendly arm around the Captain’s shoulders, surprised by the way his fingers seemed able to press between the bones. He said, ‘Sir Keith, not wishing to interrupt, but would you like me — well — I could introduce you to Mr Jenkin or Mr Baker over there, perhaps?’ He tried out something between a wink and a blink, still clutching the Captain’s fragile shoulders. Steering them, in fact, in the direction of the bar. A man like the Captain could probably be bribed into silence with a drink or two. An outright ejection from the hotel would risk making a scene. Nice guy — Moose meant him no harm — but he was out of place here. This was a private function.
Sir Keith’s gaze fell on Moose’s name badge. ‘I can assure you, Mr Finch, that I don’t need to be introduced to either of the two gentlemen you mentioned.’
‘Ah, of course, not introduced — not introduced as such — I just meant —’ He did a quick sideways nod in the direction of the Captain. Saving you! Saving you! He’s fun but a little bit crazy!
‘I would say, in fact,’ Sir Keith went on, ‘that I probably speak to those gentlemen as often as I do to my own wife. Moreover, the — the Captain? Yes. Well, the Captain and I were in the middle, as it happens, of a conversation about environmental issues.’
‘Right,’ Moose said. ‘As if the environment’s a priority!’ He swallowed and studied Sir Keith’s increasingly grave expression. He was fucking this up. He really was. ‘In times like these, I mean.’ Stop talking, stop talking. ‘You know, the rich — poor divide and …’ This was bad. This was digging yourself a hole. A Moose in a volcano with a shovel, rumblings from below. Natural disaster with extra lava. He waited in silence for Sir Keith to speak.
‘The environment,’ Sir Keith said, ‘is among the most important of concerns. What you may consider to be background scenery is of course — Hello, James, how do you do? — the very thing keeping us alive.’
‘Makes me think,’ the Captain said, ‘of those lines from Auden.’
‘Yes?’ Sir Keith said. ‘I’m not familiar.’
The Captain recited a line of poetry, something to do with faces in public places.
‘Ah,’ Sir Keith said. ‘I must make a note!’ He looked bafflingly happy, his eyes soft and moist.
‘I always prefer,’ the Captain said, ‘to be outdoors, don’t you? The environment. The elements. The sea. Whereas events such as these — a fandangling job at curation, don’t get me wrong — but public men such as yourself cooped up in small rooms, the faces in private places …’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ Sir Keith said. ‘Refreshingly honest. I take no offence. In fact —’ he leaned in, chuckling (chuckling!) — ‘I couldn’t agree more, truth be told.’
Moose looked on, astonished, as the conversation continued to blossom. The Captain brushed crumbs from his jacket. His hair looked extra white and his cheeks teemed with uncommon colour.
‘Though I would like,’ the Captain said, ‘to speak to you about another matter at some point, too. One concerning education and health. I believe you have links to the pharmaceutical industry? I’d like to discuss what we can do to address a growing problem, a global problem I’ve already written to Mr Peter Tatchell about. It concerns prejudices and — sincerely — preventing many deaths. But perhaps I’m taking up too much of your fine-sung time.’
‘Not at all,’ Sir Keith said. ‘You have my ear.’
Fine-sung time? What did it even mean? Moose shook his head and walked away. You misread people and misread people and misread people again.
Marina was still standing by the curtains, bare arms crossed, back straight, hair and heels reflecting lamplight. ‘The Captain still seems to be here,’ she said.
‘Yes. That’s true. Holding it together pretty well.’
Sasha walked by, yawning. A minister touched Karen’s wrist and asked her about cake, or possibly his coat.
Marina said, ‘Freya has been going there a lot, no? The Captain’s museum.’
‘The what? Oh. That.’ Paparazzi were beginning to throng outside, a mass of denim jackets and camera bags, which meant –