of the people surveyed said they would have sex with anyone reasonably attractive in the vicinity. All inhibitions disappeared. You had to laugh at this notion. End of the World Sex, they called it in the survey. What a wonderful thought. Was that what was happening to me? End of the World Sex? The world was about to change for me inexorably and forever. Everything speeded up.
Much later in our relationship she gave me something which explained it all better than I could explain it to myself. It was a book of Sufi poetry. Every culture has its Romeo and Juliet love story. For the Sufis it is the story of Leila (or Layla) and her beloved, a man nicknamed Majnun. Like all Romeo and Juliet stories it ends in desperate and permanent separation. Happy love affairs are tedious literature. Nothing cheers us up more than reading about other people’s personal lives going catastrophically wrong. In this case, Layla dies (of course) Majnun chooses to lie on her grave and fade away until the dust of their bodies finally unites them in death though they were always separated in life.
In the Sufi poem a headstone was put on the grave and it reads:
Two lovers lie in this one tomb
United forever in death’s dark womb.
Faithful in separation, true in love:
May one tent house them in heaven above.
My plane landed at Dulles International Airport and I had work to do. The entire fate of the British government lay in my hands – apparently. And yet all modern politics is an exercise in compartmentalization, or – if you prefer – organized hypocrisy. I was a hypocrite, even to myself. I did not have long to wait for the compartments to fall apart.
Oh, yes, may one tent house them, Layla and Majnun, faithful in separation, true in love.
HARRY BURNETT’S STORY
Harry Burnett finally got around to switching on his mobile phone after he had watched the news bulletin.
Amanda’s text read:
‘Someone tried to kill father. Or poss. suicide. No way 2 know 4 certain. Am in Tetbury. Police here 2. Facts not clear. Huge mess. Call me asap. Love A xx.’
He dialled her number.
‘Aitch! Thank god!’
‘Tell me.’
‘Where have you been? I’ve been desperately …’
‘Working. Sorry. Phone’s been off. Just found out … Shitty, shitty day, already. Tell me.’
‘The police called. A couple of hours ago. His cleaner found him lying on the carpet first thing this morning, fully clothed. Suit. Shirt. Tie. Pills of all sorts scattered by his side and an empty whisky bottle. Wrists slashed and a kitchen knife by his side. I came straight over. I’m at his cottage now.’ She stopped gabbling and took a deep breath. ‘Aitch, they are not sure whether it’s suicide or maybe murder done up to look like suicide.’
‘I heard,’ he said.
‘Attempted suicide. Attempted murder,’ she corrected herself and started gabbling again. ‘He’s at the hospital in Gloucester having his stomach pumped and a blood transfusion. I can’t see him until later and nobody can tell me what his chances are. The police wanted me here at the house in case they have questions, but I’m like, well, maybe I don’t have any answers.’
‘What are they doing?’
‘Mooching. It’s as if they think they ought to be looking for something, but haven’t a clue what it might be. It’s terrible, Aitch! Terrible, I …’
‘Who would want to kill him now? Twenty years ago, maybe you could understand it. He had enemies. But now?’
‘No idea,’ she replied. ‘The police are saying – you know – Inspector Morse-type bullshit – “keeping an open mind”. “Exploring all avenues.” But bottles of pills? Whisky and knife wounds? And they’re pumping his guts for a drugs overdose? So what does it sound like to you, Aitch? A mistake? He wasn’t the mistake type. Or the cry-for-help type.’
‘He wasn’t the suicide type either,’ Harry said.
‘What is the suicide type?’
‘I don’t know – but not him. He’d have done it years ago if he had any shame, but he didn’t because he hasn’t. It doesn’t make any sense.’
‘How would you know?’ Amanda shot back. ‘You are hardly the expert on what makes sense. Or on our father’s character, for that matter.’
Harry wondered what percentage of telephone calls with his sister ended in a row. He guessed at fifty-fifty.
‘Maybe,’ he conceded. ‘But all I ever remember was Mr Stand-On-Your-Own-Two-Feet, Rugged Individualism, every day is full of opportunities, seize it while you can blah, blah.’
‘I don’t see …’
‘He’d never top himself, Amanda. Never.’
‘People change, Aitch. You have.’
He let it pass. People change. His father used to say that all the time, as if he could actually talk in italics. People change. It was one of his favourite parables. Father loved his parables. Harry had seen the clip on TV.
‘It’s a flip-flop,’ some smirking BBC television interviewer was hectoring Robin Burnett when he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
‘Certainly, it’s a change in direction,’ Robin agreed smoothly.
‘A change in direction?’ the interviewer repeated, his voice dripping with scorn. ‘This government has just done a complete economic U-turn and …’
‘John Maynard Keynes,’ Robin Burnett interrupted, ‘was once asked why he had changed his mind about some aspect of economic policy. And do you know his reply?’
The interviewer opened his mouth like a goldfish.
‘Well, do you?’ Robin Burnett persisted.
‘I …’
‘No?’
Robin Burnett was on top form, intimidatory, like a pike about to swallow the goldfish. He leaned towards the interviewer and wagged his finger.
‘Keynes would thunder, “When the facts change, I change my mind.” And then he would say, “and what do you do, sir?” So, what do you do, Mr Day?’
And Robin Burnett laughed. The interviewer was crushed. Harry thought it was funny that his father would quote Keynes at all, given his views on Keynesian economics, but there you are. The TV viewers would laugh too.
‘Painkillers,’ Amanda was saying.
‘What?’
