by John Gardner
‘Run,’ Lynne’s voice screaming as she backed back against the wall, clawing for her attacker’s face.
Angela appeared, steadying herself against the passage wall, coming from her room full tilt. Further down, the other doors were opened—girls crowding out. Angela heading straight for Boysie. For a wonderful second he was inspired.
‘Look out,’ he yelled. ‘Look out, Angela, your pants are coming down.’
With automatic feminine reaction the girl made a grab at her bikini briefs, letting out a yelp of dismay.
It gave them only a couple of seconds advantage, but Boysie was off up the main passageway dragging Petronella in his wake. He could hear the sound of feet close behind. Then a jerk and Petronella was pulled out of his grip. He glanced back. Angela had tackled her low down on the knees, and the two girls were sprawled across the passage—an obstacle to the half-a-dozen Seniors who were pelting after them.
‘Go on, Boysie. Run. Go on,’ yelled Petronella. Boysie faltered for a moment, then the instinct of self-preservation took hold and he was going lickerty-spit up the passage. It was only a matter of seconds before he heard noises from ahead. They were coming from the main building—from the villa. Closing in on both sides. He had reached the gymnasium by this time. The class had finished and the gym looked deserted.
Boysie’s shoulder hit the swing doors and he slewed into the great amphitheatre-like hall. At the far end, flanked by wall-bars, were more double doors. He half-ran, half-skated on his bare feet across the polished floor, through the doors and into another small gymnasium. Here, the floor was covered with fibre mats. Racks of foils, epees, sabres and quarterstaves ran the length of the wall to his right. More fencing equipment hung along the other. Mary Van Bracken, in a hugging white track suit, stood in his path.
‘Hi!’ said Boysie, breathless and trying to look unconcerned. ‘Can’t find my way out of this maze.’
Mary Van B grinned. ‘I don’t think you’re really meant to get out.’
‘Ah,’ said Boysie, playing it dim.
She laughed. ‘Aren’t you the cause of all that noise back there?’
‘Well. Yes, but if you’ll just let me ...’
‘Have at you then,’ said Miss Van Bracken, quietly making a jump for the rack of quarterstaves.
Boysie just managed to anticipate, flinging himself in the same direction as the girl. He tried to reach the staff she was tugging from the wall, missed, corrected and grabbed a weapon for himself.
They were solid, seven-foot lengths of oak, smooth to the touch and about as thick as a punt pole. Mary had leaped away into the centre of their home-made tilt-yard, holding her staff, like a rifle and bayonet, in the en guard position, its end aimed straight for Boysie’s wilting stomach. She was grinning. Irrationally, Boysie thought she looked a bit like Paul McCartney. The hair was the same anyway.
Boysie was gripping his staff in both hands, holding it straight in front of his body. He tried to remember how Eroll Flynn had done it in that Robin Hood movie. The couple circled each other—Mary’s eyes darting around Boysie’s body, searching for a suitable target.
‘Look, Mary ...’ Boysie started. She came in with a couple of feints to the left, then a series of quick jabs aimed at the stomach—vicious little prods, with the end of her staff. Boysie retreated. He could hear movements behind him, by the door. Mary shouted, ‘No leave him. He’s mine.’
‘Leave them alone.’ Klara’s voice. An order.
As they circled again, Boysie was conscious of a group of girls round Klara standing in the doorway. Mary was at him again, pushing forward. Boysie banged down hard. The force of staff against staff hurt his wrists. Again. Again. Finally he knocked the girl’s weapon to one side. She took a step back, recovered and flicked her staff into the same position as Boysie’s, returning to the attack. Once more they crossed, Boysie giving way a little, the girl consolidating by pressing blows to the centre of his staff, between the hands. Boysie bent his elbows and really took the offensive, using a paddling movement, beating at Mary’s staff first with one end, then the other.
She was tiring he could hear her breathing—little panting snorts. He forced on. Then, as Mary raised her quarterstaff above her head for a final assault, he flung his weapon to one side and reached up, hands grasping Mary’s staff close to her hands. A twist to the right—still gripping the staff—turning. They were back to back, each still clutching the staff. Boysie bent forward and pulled down with his arms. He felt the girl somersault over his back and watched as she executed a neat twist to land on her feet.
Boysie was pleased with this rather flamboyant move. Too pleased. It took almost three seconds for it to dawn on him that Mary Van Bracken was still hanging on to the quarterstaff. She was supposed to let go. He should have hung on. Three seconds were too long. Van Bracken had allowed the staff to slide out between her hands. Now, clutching it like an outsize baseball bat she brought it round in a great arc. The first blow caught him on the side of the neck. He did not even feel the second. A flash of light turning to a pinpoint in the whirling darkness. The roar of the sea and then the gabble of voices. He was being pulled to his feet. Dragged and pummelled. The sea began to get rough and, though he used all his concentration, Boysie could not hear the gulls. It was terribly important.
‘Whatyer done with all the bloody seagulls,’ he shouted.
CHAPTER NINE
GREY SENIORS: BRIS SAGO–LONDON
Two score violins—lush and syrupy—were playing an oldie he knew quite well, though he could not put a name to it. The world slushed unevenly back into his brain, though he was not quite sure whether he really wanted it. Cautiously, Boysie opened one eye. For the second time in twenty-four hours he was regaining consciousness. Getting to be a habit. From the prone position he knew immediately that this was going to be worse than last time. He ached horribly. His head, last year’s model, seemed somehow detached—a replica moulded from cold scrambled eggs. A nasty thumping pain in his right shoulder, and he could not move properly.
‘I’m paralysed,’ he said weakly.’
‘Ah, Boysie’s back in the land of the living.’ Klara’s voice. He moved his head. A pair of polished boots sank into the carpet by his face. He looked higher. Klara Thirel was up there at about 20,000 feet smiling pleasantly. She stepped back. ‘Welcome to the party, Boysie. Have a drink.’ She was clutching a glass in one hand and a swishy black riding crop in the other. ‘Sit him up, girls.’
Boysie moved his head again. Two steam engines came to life, and the Simplon Express made a detour through his cerebellum. Angela and her room mate (back in the grey shirts and short-shorts) lifted him. He was not paralysed but his arms were somehow pinioned to his sides. The girls certainly knew their stuff—points of weight and all that. He was being carried like a baby and plumped into a chair—straps across his chest to the back. Unresisting, he felt straps going round his ankles. He raised his chin from the slumped position. The Simplon Express decided to whistle. Boysie shook his head. He was sure something from inside was spraying out of his ears. Lynne and Petronella were strapped to their chairs on the other side of the room. Quiet. Not struggling. It seemed to be a large office, only the walls would not stop undulating long enough for a close inspection. Some red velvet. Crimson velvet. A desk the size of a billiard table. Above it an oil painting. Klara. An oil painting of Klara. On the desk, gramophone records and an aged gramophone. Boysie concentrated. The gramophone was providing the singing strings.
‘It’s Laura,’ said Boysie happily, recognising the tune.
‘That’s it, Boysie. Laura. One of my favourites. Listen, it’s one of their best.’ Klara seated herself on the desk in a gleeful attitude. ‘Get Boysie a drink, Angela. Do you like French 75s? That’s what we’re drinking, French 75s.’
Boysie closed his eyes and nodded. This was ridiculous. A great big stupid Cinerama-type dream. Angela came towards him (she managed very well on a floor that kept tilting). The tall blonde slid into
his lap, one arm going round his neck, a pair of soft buttocks lowering themselves gently on to his thighs.
‘There we are, Boysie. Nice drinkies.’ Angela, all intimate and cosy, putting the glass to his lips. The ultra-sophisticated champagne cocktail that is a French 75 went down in one.
‘More,’ said Boysie.
‘Greedy.’ Angela leaned forward and touched his cheek with her lips. At that moment the gramophone erupted. Laura was just discernible—the melodic line being played at speed on a euphonium. There was a banjo in there as well. Pistol shots and a whole mad razamataz of noise. Then the singer began, with sound effects filling out the lyrics.
‘0 Laura (wolf whistle)
Is the face in the misty light (scream)
Footsteps that you hear down the hall (clump-clump-clump)
The laugh that floats on a summer night.’ (Maniacal guffaw)
Klara was rolling about. Angela giggled.
‘Aren’t they the end?’
‘I remember them,’ said Boysie, still numb. ‘From way back I remember them. Spike Jones.’
‘You’ve got it, Boysie. Spike Jones and his City Slickers. These are my originals. I had them just after I first came here. Someone found a whole box of records in a crashed British truck just across the frontier, in Italy. Spike Jones and his City Slickers. The first real exploiters of popular sick music. The rage when you were fighting my father.’
‘Your father?’ Boysie caught her up on the last two words. ‘What’s your father got to do with it?’ Spike Jones and his hilarious hardware orchestra of the forties brought Laura to a cacophonous finale.
‘What?’ Klara incredulous. ‘You know who I am surely, Boysie? Your organisation isn’t as badly informed as that. After all you’ve been trying to make us close shop for the last two years.’
‘I know who you are,’ spat Lynne. ‘Answer no questions, Oakes.’
‘Oh shut up,’ shouted Boysie. He was getting bored with Lynne’s new confidence. Petronella just sat still looking pretty. Klara stood up, the riding crop slapping her right boot with some force.
‘I think you’d better leave us, girls.’
Angela rose with a little twitch of her bottom, long fingers giving Boysie’s neck a gentle squeeze. Her partner stepped from behind Lynne’s chair.
‘Hector,’ said Angela cryptically.
‘Oh my god, where’s the stupid thing gone. I was enjoying myself so much.’ Klara genuinely distraught. ‘He should be back in his nest. It’s not really warm enough for him to be out for very long.’ She glanced towards the wall near Boysie’s chair. About three inches from the floor there was an oblong recess, lit from behind. It was obviously the home of some tropical animal. A thermostat control speared up at one end, and the box was cut off from the room by a sliding glass panel, now three-quarters open. A small ramp led down to the carpet.
‘Hector,’ purred Klara. ‘Hector. Come on, Hector. I’ll tempt him out. Ingrid, his food.’
Ingrid (Angela’s friend) did not move. She had flattened herself against the wall, her face chalk-white.
‘She’s no good. Frightened of him.’ Angela moved carefully across the room to the desk and picked up a box from behind the gramophone. She handed it to Klara.
‘I’m sorry, Principal.’ Ingrid was trembling, still trying to push her back through the Sanderson’s Silk Finish. ‘I’d forgotten he was out. I just can’t ...’
Klara took no notice. ‘Come on, Hector. Nice grasshoppers.’
Petronella screamed. An indrawn shriek of genuine revulsion. Boysie’s skin tingled, his veins turning into ant runs and stomach contracting with a slow crawling sensation. Moving slowly over Petronella’s feet was a spider. His fear of spiders, he knew, was irrational, but this was too much for anyone. The spider was the largest he had ever seen—a body the size of a medium orange, the head almost as big as a table-tennis ball. It was covered all over with a kind of black plush, its long creeping legs the thickness of a chicken’s wishbone. He automatically pressed back into the chair, even though the creature was on the other side of the room.
It spotted Klara and went into a canter.
‘There you are. Good boy. Isn’t he beautiful?’ She offered the beast a dry-looking grasshopper on the palm of her hand, and, as the brute approached, she flicked the titbit into its nest. The spider scuttled past Boysie and up the ramp—he could hear its legs drumming on the wood like a couple of tiny horses. Klara went over, slid the glass panel into place and clicked a small padlock.
‘I had to have a lock fitted.’ Sounding like a housewife dis-cussing the new dog kennel. ‘He’s so strong. Used to push the glass open. He loves to come up on to my desk and play with the papers while I’m working.’ She smiled affectionately at the revolting Hector who was now demolishing the luckless grasshopper.
Boysie felt nothing but a deep loathing. Ingrid looked as though she was recovering from mild shock.
‘You are squeamish, aren’t you?’ said Klara. ‘Hector wouldn’t hurt a fly. Well, that’s not exactly true, but he certainly wouldn’t hurt you.’ She turned to Boysie. ‘One of my old girls gave him to me. He comes from Brazil.’
‘Oh. Where the nuts come from.’
‘Indian children there keep them as pets. Even take them around on leads like dogs. They’re harmless, friendly things.’
Boysie swallowed and tried to act unconcerned. ‘Is he house trained?’ Looking shiftily at the spider behind its safety curtain of glass.
Klara laughed. ‘All right, girls. I’ll call you when I need you.’
Angela and Ingrid both came to attention, doing a smart about turn and leaving the room. Klara was standing directly in front of Boysie. She paused for a moment, the little whip thwacking gently on to the palm of her left hand. At last she spoke quietly.
‘You really don’t know who I am?’
There were so many paradoxes about the woman. One moment, as now, she could look distinctly desirable; the next, she was a strange, warped person who dispensed sadistic discipline, listened to incongruous nostalgic Spike Jones records, and kept a horrible hairy beast as a gooey woman would keep a Pekinese. Boysie felt tired and not to happy with his stomach.
‘Does it really matter, Doctor Thirel?’
‘It matters to me.’ She was still speaking softly, but with a hint of fire in her eyes. ‘And I think it matters to you. You haven’t been briefed properly, dear Boysie. Lynne, as she calls herself, knows who I am. It worries me that you do not.’
‘Look, this isn’t a plot. I’m not implicated in any Machiavellian plan. I haven’t really got anything to do with Lynne. My head aches, I feel sick; and if it’s all the same to you I’d rather call it a day.’
Klara nodded. ‘And if you’re not implicated with Sweet Lynne why did you come running so quickly when she invited you to the Madonna Del Sasso? An invitation which, you will have guessed, I intercepted.’ A bleak, thin rearrangement of the lips. ‘Let’s try your reflexes.’ The riding crop flicking her hand again.
‘Oh hell,’ moaned Boysie to himself, ‘now we’re going to get the rough stuff.’
‘Thirel. That’s your first clue. I’m rather proud of it as an anagram.’
Boysie’s mind began to make mechanical fumbles with the letters—Thelir, Lireth, Ethril. He gave up after Ethril.
‘I was brought here twenty years ago.’ Klara, determined to have her say. ‘A girl with very fixed ideas. This place—the villa and the underground shelters—had been bought in my name as early as 1940. At least my parents made sure that I was taken care of.’ A ghost laugh. Cynical. ‘They were making sure for themselves as well mind you. Il Portone was supposed to be a bolt hole. A rat hole. A hidey hole. I got here on April 26th, 1945. A great friend of my father was due to arrive a few days later. He never made it—him and the woman. Caught and shot on Lake Como on the 28th.’ Her feet were apart, hands clasped together in front of her round the whip. ‘Two days later, in a Berlin bunker my mother was poisoned and my fat
her shot himself.’ The eyes holding Boysie like little magnetic rays. ‘Now do you know?’
Boysie was too mushy with fatigue to take in the enormity of what Klara was saying. He stared hard trying to superimpose a picture over Klara’s face. The picture of a grim face with hard eyes; a lock of hair falling forward on the forehead; an absurd moustache.
‘But ...’
Klara nodded again. ‘It’s true, Boysie. Most of the European Press have speculated for years. The few people who know have kept quiet. Some as the—need I finish the cliché?’
Boysie wanted to shout and throw things around. But, when he spoke, the words just about made it.
‘So you’ve been carrying on the good work. Subversive super-women. Neo-bleeding-Nazis.’
The final word seemed to trigger a vast hidden supply of passion. Klara’s face flushed a furious red; her hands clenching and unclenching as if trying to master some terrible upflow of temper. When she spoke, her voice quavered on the borderline of sanity.
‘No. You don’t know.’ A whistling intake of breath. ‘When my father and mother died I could have danced on their bodies. I had neither seen nor spoken to them for eight years—and I don’t suppose they were over anxious to see me. But I was useful.’ Two more beats with the riding crop. Another intake of breath. ‘Since the day that man died I have done everything possible to help those most diametrically opposed to him.’ She spun on a booted heel, marched back to the desk, rooting among the pile of records, slipping one on to the old gramophone and cranking the winding handle. Spike Jones blared out again—ribald and very much from the past. Boysie remembered his own inconspicuous and unheroic part in the war to end all wars against Klara’s father. The barrack rooms and blackout pubs. The comic radio shows. Tommy Handley. Be like Dad keep Mum. The background to the times when he was a NAAFI cowboy. An ATS girl’s knees. Somebody thumping out tunes on a jangling piano. Yours, Room 504, That Lovely Weekend, We’re Going to Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line, and this song rising from the dead era.
