five rolls. The dark room waited.
I ignored my work, though, and went to see Adam.
*
I waited in Rita, his secretary's, room while he finished off his day's work. It was eight o'clock by the time I arrived at Wandsworth town hall, and Rita was long gone. I poked my head round the door to let him know I'd arrived. He looked surprised, and then waved breezily, mouthing, “Just a minute,” and turned back to the phone.
“Yes, yes, I do understand the problem, Gavin. We all understand. We all know it's a problem. But the problem is that it's not our problem; it's yours. And I'd like you to make the problem go away.” Adam waved me away and frowned at the phone. I withdrew, closed the door gently, and sat on an uncomfortable red nylon sofa to wait, profoundly glad that I had no interest in local politics.
The room was large, cheap and ill-proportioned, with an ungenerous window behind the secretary's desk, cut in half by the recently added partition which had created Adam's office. On the wall there were large cork message boards, several with advice leaflets about citizens' rights, health and the like, and one with Adam's electioneering material from last year. Pamphlets, rosettes, newspaper clippings, shots of Adam with half-famous politicians, strip-banners in blue—“Adam Yates, the choice for Wandsworth” writ large. All this paraphernalia was pinned round the edges of a campaign photograph, which was so unflattering that I'd always been astonished he was re-elected. Like the banners, it was trimmed in blue. His name was printed in blocky blue letters beneath it, with another blue strap-line below that. Everything was designed to frame and enhance a two-foot-high photograph of him. The simple bold design was clearly intended to make a powerful statement about the force of the personality of the person in the picture. Here is Adam Yates, it seemed to suggest. Adam Yates is all you ever need to know. Life is that simple. Adam Yates. Strong stuff. Except, of course, that the picture was crap. It was black and white, it gave the impression of being slightly out of focus because it had been printed so cheaply, and it had been shot against a blank wall. If you'd put a number round his neck you could have put up Wanted posters for him in police stations. The photo had lost everything that made him who he was: there was no generosity, no laughter, no charm. He looked like a badly drawn cartoon. I'd told him all this; he'd mumbled something about how it was always done this way, and the need to understand the common man. It sounded like standard reactionary bollocks to me, so I shut up. And, to be fair, the opposition's posters were just as bad, so I suppose it made no difference.
“Harry, sorry.” Adam burst out of his office. He dumped paperwork and a dictation tape on his secretary's desk. “Thursday's always the day from hell, God knows why. The judge was already pissed at ten this morning and we never got past lunch. So I had all afternoon here, which should have been easily enough time to get everything done except I've just had Gavin Tosspot on the phone for an hour, the fuckwit who runs Finance, telling me my own office—this one—doesn't exist.” Adam frowned. “Would he deign to come up and see for himself? Would he hell—and that was before he got on to whingeing about some subcontractor who's defaulted. All his problem, all his fault, except the subcontractor's appointment was political, so now it's my problem.”
Adam paused in his rant long enough to look at me closely. He frowned and chewed his lower lip. “Harry, you look terrible. Has it been rough?”
“Yes. No. Sort of. Hangover.”
Adam, true to form, was showing no sign of suffering; he could drink a distillery dry and bounce out of bed the next morning as though he hadn't touched a drop. He winced in sympathy. “And here's me rabbiting on about some arsehole in Finance. What an idiot.” I tried to shake my head, which turned out not to
I ignored my work, though, and went to see Adam.
*
I waited in Rita, his secretary's, room while he finished off his day's work. It was eight o'clock by the time I arrived at Wandsworth town hall, and Rita was long gone. I poked my head round the door to let him know I'd arrived. He looked surprised, and then waved breezily, mouthing, “Just a minute,” and turned back to the phone.
“Yes, yes, I do understand the problem, Gavin. We all understand. We all know it's a problem. But the problem is that it's not our problem; it's yours. And I'd like you to make the problem go away.” Adam waved me away and frowned at the phone. I withdrew, closed the door gently, and sat on an uncomfortable red nylon sofa to wait, profoundly glad that I had no interest in local politics.
The room was large, cheap and ill-proportioned, with an ungenerous window behind the secretary's desk, cut in half by the recently added partition which had created Adam's office. On the wall there were large cork message boards, several with advice leaflets about citizens' rights, health and the like, and one with Adam's electioneering material from last year. Pamphlets, rosettes, newspaper clippings, shots of Adam with half-famous politicians, strip-banners in blue—“Adam Yates, the choice for Wandsworth” writ large. All this paraphernalia was pinned round the edges of a campaign photograph, which was so unflattering that I'd always been astonished he was re-elected. Like the banners, it was trimmed in blue. His name was printed in blocky blue letters beneath it, with another blue strap-line below that. Everything was designed to frame and enhance a two-foot-high photograph of him. The simple bold design was clearly intended to make a powerful statement about the force of the personality of the person in the picture. Here is Adam Yates, it seemed to suggest. Adam Yates is all you ever need to know. Life is that simple. Adam Yates. Strong stuff. Except, of course, that the picture was crap. It was black and white, it gave the impression of being slightly out of focus because it had been printed so cheaply, and it had been shot against a blank wall. If you'd put a number round his neck you could have put up Wanted posters for him in police stations. The photo had lost everything that made him who he was: there was no generosity, no laughter, no charm. He looked like a badly drawn cartoon. I'd told him all this; he'd mumbled something about how it was always done this way, and the need to understand the common man. It sounded like standard reactionary bollocks to me, so I shut up. And, to be fair, the opposition's posters were just as bad, so I suppose it made no difference.
“Harry, sorry.” Adam burst out of his office. He dumped paperwork and a dictation tape on his secretary's desk. “Thursday's always the day from hell, God knows why. The judge was already pissed at ten this morning and we never got past lunch. So I had all afternoon here, which should have been easily enough time to get everything done except I've just had Gavin Tosspot on the phone for an hour, the fuckwit who runs Finance, telling me my own office—this one—doesn't exist.” Adam frowned. “Would he deign to come up and see for himself? Would he hell—and that was before he got on to whingeing about some subcontractor who's defaulted. All his problem, all his fault, except the subcontractor's appointment was political, so now it's my problem.”
Adam paused in his rant long enough to look at me closely. He frowned and chewed his lower lip. “Harry, you look terrible. Has it been rough?”
“Yes. No. Sort of. Hangover.”
Adam, true to form, was showing no sign of suffering; he could drink a distillery dry and bounce out of bed the next morning as though he hadn't touched a drop. He winced in sympathy. “And here's me rabbiting on about some arsehole in Finance. What an idiot.” I tried to shake my head, which turned out not to
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