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The house is silent, as usual, when he finally fumbles his key out of his pocket and into the door. Dakin can't stand the babble of the radio, the endless drone of bad news, Major's damp voice seeping through the speakers as inescapable as the rain that breaks endlessly against the pavement and ruins his shoes. For an area that's supposed to be gentrifying, the council has done sweet f.a. about the dip in the pavement two doors down, and Dakin toes his shoes off in the hall, leaves them for a moment until force of long habit makes him return and sling them onto the rack. He’s eyed the rack with distaste ever since Sophie had looked at it, said everything with one eyebrow and a breathless laugh like a shoe-rack was unbearably passé, before she took him to bed, and it had been that way round, she'd made that clear, which was the cherry on top of the whole shitty week in what was shaping up to be a shitty year.
He catches his eye in the hall mirror and finger-combs through his hair, an unconscious gesture that irritates him when he spots it. It's too quiet for once, he can hear the drum of the rain on the glass of the front door. His briefcase sits there in its own little pool of water, ten thousand documents inside and every one of them needs his attention right this moment, starting with the file that Terrence 'call me Terry' Paulson had dropped on his desk and asked him to give a quick read through, shouldn't take a moment when, if Dakin was right, it was three solid hours of slogging. TV it is, and ignoring the ginger cat that's clawing at the window, its wet furious face glaring at him through the gap in the curtains as he pulls them. It looks like he feels after work, he thinks, and turns round just in time to see Irwin on screen, pushing his glasses up his nose, like he's really fucking enthused about whatever he's talking about, little abortive movements of his hands as he explains to his silent audience just exactly what the War of Roses had been about.
Liar. Dakin says it inside his head first, and then again, out loud because nobody's going to hear him. Irwin doesn't believe a word of what he's saying. Dakin doesn't know why he’s so sure, law has been about beating the instinct out of him. He doesn't turn it off though because Irwin does it so well, and pathetic as it is, it does him good to see somebody who can actually do their job. It's all dead and gone anyway, no need to turn off the TV like he's avoiding something. The past is a foreign country, he thinks, and Hector chuckles dimly in his mind, just as Irwin turns his chin at this angle and Dakin remembers it all, scent of varnished desks in his nostrils, Irwin's unbelieving eyes and the soft breathless intensity of the air, like words would drown in it.
He tastes something bitter at the back of his throat, a drink he never had, swallows it back and watches the programme like he's Scripps down on his knees enacting penance for nothing at all. He wants to say Irwin's no Kenneth Clark and not just because Kenneth Clark's dead and Irwin isn't. He looks young still, something about his face and the inquisitive thrusting look that hasn't changed in ten years, a perpetual semi-pugnacious self-conscious questioning, and there's nothing of the solid academic about him. He slips like an eel between subjects, cuts between them like the cameras do his scenes - Brittany, Wales, Hadrian's Wall while he talks about defense, castles, moats and arrow-slits, like there's nothing he can imagine that can possibly be more interesting, and he's dead right because Irwin's good at what he does. Slick style, substance sorely lacking, Dakin thinks, a sentence Posner would be proud of and Christ all the ghosts are crawling their way back out of the grave tonight.
He can't turn it off though, there's something mesmerising about the speed with which Irwin talks, the way he addresses the camera directly, unconscious of any barrier, and Dakin remembers being pulled in, half-spider, half-fly, with the unwilling need to get Irwin to turn that laser-sharp focus on him, and his belly throbs with something ancient, a shifting pit inside him, tar-black and undisturbed. Irwin's looking past him, unseeing and intense, while he shuffles through years of history, like it's a card-deck and he's the dealer, spreads them all out, then folds them back together quick. There's a little of the teacher there, a little more of the actor and Dakin's not sure if it's spite that makes him think there's almost nothing of the historian.
Regardless, he gets why the grannies line up at the bookshop to get their copies of 'Renaissance’ signed in person - Dakin’s mother thinks he’s ever so lovely. Irwin doesn’t put a foot wrong, exudes this serene confidence through the screen that shouldn’t suit him or feel organic but does, and Dakin can see the glassy coolness of his eyes even from the distance of a camera and ten years away. It’s almost brash, he thinks, but a little toned back - Irwin knows his audience, keeps them in the palm of his hand, all personality and the occasional sly little jokes that he angles towards the camera like he’s sharing a secret. There’s a little man trotting along behind him now, the curator of one of the castles, and Dakin watches him gaze at Irwin like he’s found the Grail, as Irwin drops glib little bits of history; twisted up in neat parcels, palatable morsels, limned in softer colours.
Somewhere between the brisk tour of Brittany and the slower tour of England (Irwin knows his audience, he lingers on the royalty, speaks in hushed tones of the halls of power) Dakin gets, not hard, but halfway there, an adolescent reaction he can only imagine is in response to the vague memory of an adolescent crisis. Irwin chunters on onscreen, face rapt, like once again he’s picking up the conversational ball and tossing it back, and making Dakin feel so bloody smart for making Irwin give that quick ducked half-smile, and he writhes with embarrassment for his younger self, at how obvious he’d been. Only Irwin hadn’t been that much older, had he? Not really, and as obvious as Dakin, just a little more afraid, a little more discreet.
It feels wrong, like something a pervert would do, wanking to a history programme, but it’s not ancient history, not really. Irwin’s asking questions now, peering intently at slabs of stone, but all Dakin can think about is half-formed thoughts about drinks, and forbidden territory, sudden terrifying seismic shifts, and he’s got his trousers open and his hand in his pants, and he gets the job done like that, hard and fast, no finesse, wanking to a blindly oblivious liar who probably doesn’t even remember him.
When he’s done, he’s left with a sticky hand and an increasing sense of shame - he’s glad he closed the curtains for once, some things the neighbours don’t need to know. Irwin’s still onscreen, mouth bent in an ironic half-smile as he cocks his head to listen to the woman he’s interviewing, all smooth transitions and quick half-glances at the camera, like he’s checking that it’s still there.
Dakin shook the dust of Sheffield from his feet, but Sheffield hasn’t been so keen to shed him. It clings to his voice despite his best efforts and his birth certificate, and Dakin keeps running and it keeps following him. Irwin is exactly the same, something left behind that just won’t die. He stands up to go and wash his hands, and finds himself pondering Terry’s offer of being the junior on that BBC outsourced tax work. It’s not like he’ll meet Irwin, or that he wants to meet Irwin. His eighteen year old self would laugh at what a weed he turned out to be, he thinks, and slumps back down in front of the TV when he’s done, drags out some papers and watches The Professionals instead. Irwin’s old history, and some old fucker he’d plagiarised for the beginning of at least one essay , had said it best when he said history was the sum total of the things that could have been avoided. Dakin’s always been a fan of revisionism though.