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tree_and_leaf) wrote2015-11-08 10:29 pm
tree_and_leaf) wrote2015-11-08 10:29 pm
Entry tags:
One-liner
James Bond, stickit minister.
Inspired by a line in "Spectre", but not in any sense a spoiler for the film.
No-one, of course, set out to be a double-0 agent. Admittedly, MI6's interest in its agents' psychologies was mostly confined to establishing (a) how blackmailable they were, or rather, in what way, and (b) whether they were likely to have a screaming breakdown on the job (off the job mattered less). But that didn't change the fact that nobody liked the idea of giving a licence to kill to someone who looked like they got off on it.
In that respect, James reflected, though probably no other, it was much more like the job he generally never acknowledged that he'd wanted than the one he'd admit to, i.e. the Navy. And he really had spent whole chunks of his childhood wanting to be a naval officer, and not just because he'd reckoned that the uniform was a passport to female favours he didn't yet feel confident enough to achieve by other means, although that was true, too.
But, for a while at least, there had been the other thing. If he thought about it at all, it was as a good one-liner. "It was that or the priesthood."
And it was a good one liner, because everyone thought he was joking. Obviously, and fortunately, because the Naval tendency to regard aspiring sky-pilots as guilty (of uselessness, mostly) until proven innocent had nothing on the reaction it would get from his peers in the intelligence community. Presumably M, in one or other of his or her incarnations, had seen his church file - James winced at the thought - but they'd obviously also seen enough in it to reassure them.
God knows, he thought irreligiously, what that might have been. It probably wasn't the thing that had doomed his selection conference (bizarre how much its form had resembled his later experiences at the Admiralty Interview Board), though you never knew with M - any of them.
But he really, really, hoped that what had caught M's eye wasn't that he got turned down for vicar school because he had told a psychological interviewer who had pressed him as to how much his recent and fervent chapel-nurtured faith was down to 'the loss, James, of not only your real father but your surrogate father, I do feel you have unresolved parental issues and, James, are perhaps turning God into a father substitute?" to fuck off, in exactly those words.
At least you never got that at an Admiralty Interview Board.
(What made it worse was that the interviewer might have been right).
So he had gone home and joined the Navy. Come to think of it, answering "Join the Navy" to the question "What will you do if we don't select you?" might also have been a strike against him. They probably wanted something more theological, or possibly emotional. He'd never been comfortable with emotion in public.
He never thought about it these days, other than as a one-liner.
It had been a ridiculous idea, really. He could barely imagine why he had thought he wanted to do it.
It was the chapel at school, and that bright sense of a bigger pattern. Kneeling during the prayers and feeling as if at least he knew what he was doing with his body, even if nothing else made sense. CCF drill had been the same, of course.
It was a long time since he'd done drill, as such, too. The body remembered, though, like it remembered other things. Fighting, fucking, killing. The body took over, it had its own kind of wisdom.
Priesthood. It had been a ridiculous idea.
He didn't think of it, except as a one liner.
Inspired by a line in "Spectre", but not in any sense a spoiler for the film.
No-one, of course, set out to be a double-0 agent. Admittedly, MI6's interest in its agents' psychologies was mostly confined to establishing (a) how blackmailable they were, or rather, in what way, and (b) whether they were likely to have a screaming breakdown on the job (off the job mattered less). But that didn't change the fact that nobody liked the idea of giving a licence to kill to someone who looked like they got off on it.
In that respect, James reflected, though probably no other, it was much more like the job he generally never acknowledged that he'd wanted than the one he'd admit to, i.e. the Navy. And he really had spent whole chunks of his childhood wanting to be a naval officer, and not just because he'd reckoned that the uniform was a passport to female favours he didn't yet feel confident enough to achieve by other means, although that was true, too.
But, for a while at least, there had been the other thing. If he thought about it at all, it was as a good one-liner. "It was that or the priesthood."
And it was a good one liner, because everyone thought he was joking. Obviously, and fortunately, because the Naval tendency to regard aspiring sky-pilots as guilty (of uselessness, mostly) until proven innocent had nothing on the reaction it would get from his peers in the intelligence community. Presumably M, in one or other of his or her incarnations, had seen his church file - James winced at the thought - but they'd obviously also seen enough in it to reassure them.
God knows, he thought irreligiously, what that might have been. It probably wasn't the thing that had doomed his selection conference (bizarre how much its form had resembled his later experiences at the Admiralty Interview Board), though you never knew with M - any of them.
But he really, really, hoped that what had caught M's eye wasn't that he got turned down for vicar school because he had told a psychological interviewer who had pressed him as to how much his recent and fervent chapel-nurtured faith was down to 'the loss, James, of not only your real father but your surrogate father, I do feel you have unresolved parental issues and, James, are perhaps turning God into a father substitute?" to fuck off, in exactly those words.
At least you never got that at an Admiralty Interview Board.
(What made it worse was that the interviewer might have been right).
So he had gone home and joined the Navy. Come to think of it, answering "Join the Navy" to the question "What will you do if we don't select you?" might also have been a strike against him. They probably wanted something more theological, or possibly emotional. He'd never been comfortable with emotion in public.
He never thought about it these days, other than as a one-liner.
It had been a ridiculous idea, really. He could barely imagine why he had thought he wanted to do it.
It was the chapel at school, and that bright sense of a bigger pattern. Kneeling during the prayers and feeling as if at least he knew what he was doing with his body, even if nothing else made sense. CCF drill had been the same, of course.
It was a long time since he'd done drill, as such, too. The body remembered, though, like it remembered other things. Fighting, fucking, killing. The body took over, it had its own kind of wisdom.
Priesthood. It had been a ridiculous idea.
He didn't think of it, except as a one liner.