Reckless

by William Nicholson

  Ten years! Ten more years of weakness! The great experiment launched by Lenin, the hope of the world, would be smothered in its cradle. Stalin was right. They would be strangled like kittens.

  ‘There is a way,’ he said to Malinowsky. ‘There is a way to defend socialism, and match the might of America, and reduce our defence budget, all in a single stroke!’

  ‘What is that way, Nikita Sergeyevich?’ said the obliging marshal.

  ‘We put nuclear missiles on Cuba!’

  So simple. So perfect. The medium-range R-12s and R-14s were no threat to America here on home soil. But plant them in Cuba and they could reach half the cities in the United States.

  ‘Do you think,’ said Malinowsky, ‘that the Americans would allow us to do that?’

  ‘Why should they know? We’ll do it in secret. Then by the time they find out, it’ll be too late.’

  The more Khrushchev thought about it, the better he liked it.

  ‘Kennedy did nothing when the Berlin Wall went up. He’ll do nothing again. What can he do? Risk a war that would blow up half his own people?’

  He turned to Troyanovsky.

  ‘Well, Oleg Alexandrovich? What have you got to say? You know the way the Americans think.’

  Troyanovsky thought the plan insane. But he also knew that direct opposition only served to make Khrushchev more determined to have his own way.

  ‘It’s a bold idea, Comrade Chairman,’ he said. ‘But there are definite risks.’

  ‘Of course there are risks! Fortune favours the bold! Even Stalin never thought of such a move! Get your people onto it at once, Rodion Yakovlevich. There’s no time to lose. Work out everything we’re going to need. The missiles, the warheads, the support teams, the transport, the ships.’

  He gestured over the sea towards Turkey.

  ‘This’ll give them a taste of their own medicine!’

  *

  Khrushchev flew back from Sochi to Moscow that same day. He called a meeting of the Defence Council in the Oval Room, the large amphitheatre next to his first-floor Kremlin office. The meeting brought together the twelve-man Presidium and the heads of the Ministry of Defence. Here he outlined his new and top-secret plan.

  ‘The Soviet Union is dedicated to world peace,’ he said. ‘We would have no intention of ever using these weapons. I am not a lunatic. The nuclear missiles would act as a threat and a deterrent. In this sense, they are truly weapons of peace.’

  The deputy premier, Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan, the great survivor from the early days of Lenin, urged caution.

  ‘You think this can be done without the Americans knowing?’

  ‘Maskirovka, Anastas Ivanovich. The art of deception and disguise.’

  Khrushchev’s overwhelming self-confidence forced the plan through. Approval, as was customary, was unanimous.

  ‘I’ll wait until the American mid-term elections are over,’ said Khrushchev, ‘then I’ll go to the United Nations and announce the deployment in the General Assembly. Then I’ll fly to Havana and pose for photographs with Fidel in front of an R-14 in firing position.’

  He slapped the table and hooted with laughter.

  ‘Comrades,’ he concluded, ‘I trust you see the enormous advantages that flow from this one simple idea. Not only do we secure the revolution in Cuba in perpetuity, but by placing existing medium-range missiles there we achieve, at a single stroke, full nuclear parity with the United States. All this at virtually no cost! The money we save from our defence budget can now flow into our economic and agricultural programmes. We will beat our swords into ploughshares. There will be no need for so many tank regiments, so many destroyers, so many fighter aircraft. You see how progressive my plan is? You see how truly it’s in the interests of world peace? With this one move, we will make socialism safe for a generation!’

  11

  In the enclosed all-male world of a boy’s boarding prep school in rural Sussex she might as well have been an alien descended from outer space. A beautiful alien, an emissary from a more advanced civilisation perhaps, sent to enslave mankind. At this moment she was sitting hunched over a stool in the school’s art room, at work on a still life. Her subject, an empty wine bottle behind two apples, stood on the windowsill. Dappled light filtering through the branches of the lime trees outside made patterns on the apples’ shiny surfaces. She worked with frowning concentration, smoking a cigarette, letting the ash fall unnoticed to the floor.

  The art teacher, once craggily handsome, now a ghost of his former glory, slouched in a canvas chair and watched her with a dulled and hopeless longing. She was well worth the watching: eighteen years old, slim, distractingly beautiful. Black slacks, a tight black jumper, almost black hair. Not much good at art, of course.

  Maurice Jenks, known in the school as the Magnificent Wreck, was not much good at art himself, but he was good enough to hold down a job overseeing the sons of the privileged in what was essentially a leisure activity. The goddess on the stool was called Pamela Avenell. She had come to him for private lessons because she had two younger brothers in the school, and lived nearby, and like so many pretty girls with no qualifications, supposed she might have a future in something to do with art. For example, thought Maurice Jenks in a burst of aching lust, she could peel off that tight black jersey and show me her artistically interesting naked body. Ah, if only. Twenty years ago he would have given it a shot. As matters stood, restraint was the order of the day. At least she gave him a break from the company of small boys, who merely bored him, given that he was not queer. Though considering his record of decline, no doubt that was to come.

  He could hear them now, flocks of them, their thin voices calling in the sharp spring air from the playing fields beyond the lime trees. The Magnificent Wreck hoisted himself to his feet to attend to his charge. Time to check her work and tell encouraging lies.

  ‘Better,’ he said. ‘Much better. Take a closer look at the apples.’

  ‘I hate apples,’ said Pamela.

  ‘They’re just forms. Look for the light and dark.’

  He looked at the light and dark of her curving neck, her tumble of hair. It would be so easy to lean down and kiss that soft skin. He watched her pencil scratching away over the sketchpad, steadily making her first passable rendering a great deal worse. What was it about art that made everyone think they could do it? Indulgent parents, presumably. Confronted with offspring who failed at long division and Latin grammar, they fell back on the consoling nostrum that they were artistic. In the upper middle classes the stupid boys went into the City, and the stupid girls did art.

  The Magnificent Wreck wondered if Pamela would tell on him if he took a swig from the bottle in the paint cupboard that was mendaciously labelled White Spirit.

  ‘Oh, bother!’ exclaimed Pamela, laying down a pencil, stubbing out her cigarette. ‘It’s all gone wrong.’ She turned her limpid gaze onto the art teacher. ‘I’m such a washout, aren’t I?’

  ‘Not at all,’ he lied gallantly. ‘You’re just impatient.’

  ‘I can’t help it,’ said Pamela. ‘I can only really do the things I want to do.’

  She gave him a mischievous grin that sent shudders through his ravaged frame. Sweet Jesus, he thought, if only these girls knew the power they possess. Now and for a few short years to come the world is theirs to command.

  ‘Mr Jenks?’

  He jumped. He realised he’d gone into some kind of trance, staring at her.

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘I think I should be getting home.’

  He looked at the clock. In fifteen minutes’ time he was supposed to be on duty supervising the lower changing room. Even art teachers bear their share of the domestic chores.

  ‘I don’t suppose you could give me a lift?’

  There was insufficient time to run Pamela to Edenfield and be back by 3.30. Why couldn’t she walk?

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  They walked out together to the open space beside the main b
uilding where his Morris Traveller was parked. It was a battered half-timbered vehicle with room for a bedroll in the back. There had been times when he had had nowhere else to sleep.

  Pamela got into the passenger side and he got into the driver’s side.

  ‘We could take the old coach road,’ she said.

  The old coach road was slower and more twisting than the main road, and therefore would make him even later than he would already be.

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  He drove out past the playing fields, where troops of small and muddy boys were being rounded up by large and muddy teachers, and turned onto the rutted tree-lined track.

  ‘I’m not really much good at art, am I?’ said Pamela. ‘Actually I’m not sure I’m really much good at anything.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Maurice Jenks.

  ‘The awful thing is I feel as if I should be. I have this feeling I’m going to do something brilliant and wonderful, only I don’t know what.’

  Ah, youth, thought the art teacher. He too had once dreamed heady dreams. Believe them while you can, my dear.

  ‘I don’t want just to be ordinary,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure you won’t be, Pamela.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but what am I to be not ordinary at?’

  ‘You could do anything.’

  Patently untrue, and quite rightly she stamped all over it.

  ‘No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t be prime minister, or win a Nobel Prize, or be the first person on the moon. All I can do is get married and have children, which I do want to do, of course I do, but not yet. I want there to be a time before when I do … when I can be … oh, I don’t know. Just something more.’

  ‘Well, if you really want it,’ said Maurice Jenks, ‘then I’m sure it will happen.’

  ‘I do really want it,’ said Pamela. ‘Only I don’t know what it is.’

  She wriggled in the car seat. The Magnificent Wreck kept his eyes on the bumpy road ahead.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I sometimes think,’ she added after a pause. ‘I sometimes think maybe it’s wrong to think what we do is all that matters.’

  She looked up, at the farm buildings ahead.

  ‘Oh, God! We’re nearly home. Would you mind stopping, just for a minute?’

  Maurice Jenks stopped the car. She turned her lovely eyes on him.

  ‘Would you mind if I asked you a personal question, Mr Jenks?’

  ‘I hope not,’ he said.

  ‘I know I don’t really know you. But you’re not like the others. You’ve lived your own life, haven’t you?’

  ‘I’ve tried.’

  ‘There’s really no one else I can ask. You see, I have this really stupid feeling about what’s going to happen to me, and I have to tell somebody. Then you can say how silly I’m being, and tell me to forget all about it.’

  ‘I’m really not very wise, Pamela. I shouldn’t pay too much attention to anything I say.’

  ‘I think you are wise, Mr Jenks. You’ve got a wise face. I often look at your face, you know?’

  Oh God, save me. What am I to do with this enchantress who weaves her spells all unaware? Dare I tell her how long I’ve gazed at her sweet face?

  ‘Well, here goes.’ She took a breath, like someone about to jump into water. ‘I think I’m going to have a great love affair. I mean, really great. The kind of thing people write about in books. Only of course I don’t know who it’ll be with, because I never meet anybody, stuck at home all the time. But he’s out there, somewhere. And when we meet it’s going to be the start of my real life. And, oh,’ seeing he was preparing to respond, ‘you don’t need to tell me it won’t last, I know that. That doesn’t matter. All I want is for there to be a time in my life that takes me over, that sweeps me up and carries me away. A time of such power, such overwhelming power, that I’ll never forget it for the rest of my life. Then after it’s over I can do all the ordinary things, and have babies and fuss about clean sheets. But I’ll know – do you see, I’ll always know – that for a time I really was alive!’

  Her eyes shone with the passion of her dream, and at the same time she laughed, laughing at her own absurdity.

  ‘You must think I’m such a child! But really I’m not a child, you know? I’m eighteen.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re a child, Pamela. And I don’t see anything so unlikely about you having a great love affair. I think there’ll be many men who’ll prove all too eager to kneel at your feet.’

  ‘Oh, no! I don’t want them kneeling at my feet.’

  But she looked at him curiously all the same. He had given away a little more than he intended.

  ‘So you do think someone might fall in love with me?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  She went on gazing into his eyes, and all at once he saw it: this girlish innocence was a pose. She was entirely aware of the effect she had on him.

  ‘You’re a very pretty girl,’ he said. ‘You could have any man you wanted. There. Does that answer your question?’

  ‘Any man I wanted?’ she said.

  ‘Now, let’s get going. I’m already late.’

  She laid one hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Any man?’

  ‘No. Don’t do this.’

  ‘What am I not to do, Mr Jenks?’

  Oh, God! She’s practising on me.

  She wriggled again, as she had done before.

  ‘That itch!’ she said. ‘I’ve got an itch in the middle of my back, and I can’t reach it. Will you scratch it for me?’

  He closed his eyes.

  ‘Please,’ he said.

  ‘It won’t take you a moment.’

  He reached out his hand, round her slender wriggling body. She moved closer, so that he could feel the tickle of her hair on his cheek, and smell her sweet smell. His fingers felt over her back, over the ridge of her spine, over the buckle of her brassiere.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘Just there.’

  He scratched her back, helplessly obedient. Then he withdrew his hand and started up the car once more and drove on down the road. She didn’t stop him this time, and didn’t speak.

  When the car pulled into the yard of River Farm, Maurice Jenks was already so late for his changing-room duty that some other teacher would have had to cover for him. Pamela’s mother came out to see who had arrived.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Pammy. You shouldn’t make Mr Jenks drive you. You can easily walk.’

  ‘He offered, Mum. It was very kind of him.’

  She ran on into the house. Pamela’s mother went to thank the art teacher, who had not got out of his car.

  ‘Don’t let her impose on you, Mr Jenks. She can be such a little madam.’

  The Magnificent Wreck gazed up at her with faintly bloodshot eyes.

  ‘She’s a sweet girl,’ he said. ‘It’s no trouble.’

  *

  Pamela was in the kitchen making herself a golden syrup sandwich.

  ‘Did you see William or Edward at school?’ said her mother.

  ‘Heavens, no,’ said Pamela. ‘They don’t come anywhere near the art room.’

  ‘Are these art lessons doing you any good at all?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Pamela. ‘He’s a darling, but he’s not teaching me much. I keep saying, Mum, I should go to art school in London. I can stay with Susie.’

  ‘I’m not having you stay with Susie.’

  This was a long-running argument. Kitty Cornford thought her daughter was too pretty and too immature to be let loose in London with a girl of her own age. Certainly not with giddy little Susie.

  ‘Well, I don’t know what I’m going to do then, other than go mad with boredom.’

  Later that afternoon Simon Shuttleworth phoned and said why didn’t they meet up for a drink. Simon was one of those people who had always been there in her life, since she had started going to dances. For a time she had told her friends he was her boyfriend, at that stage when it seemed necessary to have a boy
friend. His great merit more recently was that he had a car.

  ‘I’ll be back for supper, Mum.’

  ‘Don’t be late, darling. You know Larry hates to wait.’

  Simon showed up in his little red MG. He wore a tweed jacket and cavalry twill trousers the same colour as his hair. He was what was called a ‘suitable boy’, which made Pamela treat him badly, without quite knowing why. He was twenty-two years old, training to be a solicitor in the old established Lewes firm of Adams & Remers.

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked her as he opened the car door for her.

  ‘Anywhere,’ she said.

  ‘How about the Cricketers?’

  ‘God, no. Let’s go to the Riverside.’

  The Riverside was the most expensive hotel in the area, a former abbey turned into a luxury retreat. The drinks in the bar were stupid prices.

  ‘Great. The Riverside it is.’

  The short drive in the MG was cold, noisy and uncomfortable. The hotel was agreeably pampering. They sat in a long room got up like the drawing room of a stately home, in deep chintz-covered armchairs, looking out over the river at twilight. Pamela had a gin and tonic and lit up a cigarette. The waiter brought a small dish of peanuts, which Simon ate one by one in a steady stream, unaware that he was doing so. He talked about mutual friends in the area, about office life, about a house he and some others were planning to rent in France in August.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said, as if the idea had just come to him. ‘Why don’t you come too? Heaps of room.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Pamela. ‘I’m not sure of my plans for the summer.’

  ‘There’s a pool there, and a tennis court. You could drive down with me.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Oh, do say yes. It would be so great if you came. Roger and Jill are coming. And the Maynards.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ she replied.

  ‘So are you going to the Kinrosses on Saturday?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I must say, you seem very vague about your life, Pammy.’