The Aachen Memorandum

by Andrew Roberts

  Just as he was getting into Gemma’s bright yellow grade 4 electric outside, Horatio looked up at the windows of the West Mercia Room. There was Tallboys, gawping down at him. Horatio pointed proprietorially through the auto roof at Gemma in the driver’s seat. She couldn’t see the gesture. Then he pointed at himself, trying to send Tallboys the message that he was interested in the American, not in Cleo at all.

  Tallboys dashed away from the window and off towards the stairs. Horatio hopped into the auto.

  ‘And where’s Oliver at school?’ Horatio asked, trying to sound natural and praying Gemma would speed up. They drove, horribly slowly, towards the exit and Russell Square.

  ‘Chester Row. It’s kinda smart. They take them up to fourteen. They give them a good, thorough grounding in history, geography and maths.’

  ‘I thought you Yanks called it math.’

  ‘Some do, some don’t.’

  Horatio spotted Tallboys in the wing mirror. He was running towards them.

  ‘Would you mind driving a little faster? There’s someone following us whom I’d like to lose.’

  ‘Wow! Cloak and dagger or what?!’

  ‘Gemma, please. I’m serious.’ She looked across at him and saw his fear.

  ‘OK, I get the picture.’ Very suddenly, after indicating left, she swung right into the Square and off down Montague Street. In the rear-view mirror, Horatio saw Tallboys stop in his tracks, stare after them and then run across to his green grade 3. Within seconds his was after them.

  ‘Is he behind us?’ Gemma asked, as she sped down the left side of the South English Museum.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right.’ Pushing the electric to near its top speed of 70 kph, Gemma swung down Russell Street, took a sudden left straight across an oncoming taxi and shot off into Museum Street. She went straight through a red light, narrowly missing an old man on a pedestrian crossing.

  Was this was more dangerous than just confronting Tallboys, Horatio wondered? Then he remembered the boiled eggs.

  At the end of Museum Street, Gemma turned a sharp right into Bloomsbury Way, through another set of lights. Just as Tallboys was coming up behind her she pulled a handbrake U-turn at the very last moment and zoomed down St Giles Street, wheels screeching.

  Horatio was terrified, exhilarated and proud. Mostly terrified.

  Tallboys slammed straight on, and by the time he had been able to stop, reverse and give chase again, they had got down High Holborn and were emerging into Shaftesbury Avenue. By Piccadilly Circus he was nowhere to be seen. Like Horatio’s breath.

  In between hard sucks on his inhaler he cried, ‘That was great! Better than the Indy 500!’ Gemma looked blank as she negotiated her way round Delors Square, past the Regional Gallery, the Sainsbury Wing, the A.F.T.A. Consulate, through Admiralty Arch and down towards Attali House. Halfway down the Mall she asked, ‘So, who was he? I kinda recognised him from somewhere.’

  ‘He’s called Alex Tallboys.’

  ‘Any relation to that woman who bust up our chat on Friday?’

  ‘Husband.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Jealous husband, you mean. I see!’

  She slammed on the brakes. The auto came to a juddering halt on the Mall, beside the St James’s Park gates.

  She stared across with a comprehending look. It made Horatio feel very uncomfortable. Autos hooted them as they passed.

  ‘He was at the party. Uh-huh. Ah get it. Ah see. Ah have just violated enough traffic regulations to get me deported and all because you want to carry on your disgusting loungelizardry with a married woman! Go on’ – she pointed at the door – ‘get out and walk! Ah’m not getting mixed up in other people’s marital problems, Ah’ve had quite enough of my own. Now git!’

  He thought fast. All he could come up with were clichés.

  ‘No! It’s not like that at all. This is political. Please drive on. I’ll explain.’ He looked nervously behind him. No sign of Tallboys. Yet. But were he to find them, Horatio knew he would last no time at all on foot in the Park.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I’ll explain everything. Only don’t boot me out now. It could be a matter of life and death.’ That much at least was true. ‘Please take me to …’ What was the brat’s name? Orson? Orlando? ‘… Oliver’s school. I’ll explain everything as we go. Trust me.’

  She looked into his eyes and, recognising genuine terror, drove on into Eaton Square. Horatio meanwhile made up a transparently ludicrous story about why he was on the run from P.I.D. It had to do with being an A.F.T.A. spy. He was sworn to secrecy. He dropped codenames of imaginary contacts at Grosvenor Square. Using a combination of friends’ first names and Metro terminals, he constructed a cast of spooks who were fighting with him to preserve international peace. He could see she hadn’t fallen for Pete Cockfoster, though, let alone Michael Upminster. Thank God it didn’t have to last long.

  Gemma was able to park almost directly outside the school. She got out, put a ten-euro piece into her headlight-meter and went to lock the auto door. ‘Please let me come in. It’s not just because of that ape. You see, I’d really like to meet Oliver.’ She thought for a moment.

  ‘You’re lying, but all right. He’s taking his weekly Civics and Lifestyle Studies test. It’s all Education Commission bullshit of course, which is why they encourage parents to attend Ah suppose. But however bad it gets it won’t be half as stupid as what you’ve been spouting for the last five minutes Dr Horatio Lothario.’

  It might be a colossal waste of his ever more precious time, but what else was there to do? It would keep him away from the street cameras for an hour. Even if Tallboys tracked him down here somehow, he probably wouldn’t disturb the whole school to drag him out. There seemed little alternative. It would at least give him some time to think about the latest developments over the driver called Evans, the role of the

  Atgas Corporation, and the Euro-Lottery.

  And about Cleo. His cousin. They found the class on the third floor. Horatio was wheezing heavily by the time they reached it. About thirty children were being tested by an attractive young woman teacher, with a dozen parents squeezed uncomfortably at the back. Roughly half the children wore the blue uniform and gold scarf of the Youth Euro-League. Horatio took one look at the chair designed for a ten-year-old and decided to sit on the table at the rear of the class instead.

  When she walked in, Gemma blew a Texan-sized kiss to a sandy-haired boy in the front row, who reddened perceptibly. Horatio felt for him, recalling all those times at prep school when his mother used to approach him in the chapel queue in front of the entire school and publicly give him pots of Nivea cream for his chapped lips. On one sickening occasion he was even given a bottle of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. The teasing had gone on for weeks. It was one of the many tribulations arising from his not having had a father who could have told her the form.

  It was a typical classroom, with maps and drawings and nursery rhymes stuck on the walls. Horatio hadn’t yet seen any of the new de-monarchised nursery rhymes and carols which had gone down so badly with parents last year. Here they all were though. ‘The President was in his counting-house, counting out his money. His wife was in the parlour eating bread and honey’, went one. ‘Good Mr Wenceslas looked out …’ read another. ‘Citizen-Commissioner Cole was a very merry soul’ was pretty sad, he thought, and as for ‘The Grand Twilighter of York’, surely any self-respecting kid would be bound to ask why just any Yorkshireperson was able to get ten thousand people to march up and down hills in the first place?

  ‘They don’t like elitism here,’ Gemma whispered to Horatio. ‘It’s a mixed ability class.’ So it soon proved.

  ‘Now, children,’ said the pretty, auburn-haired teacher whose little retroussé nose and fit young figure made the wasted time go easier for Horatio, ‘who can tell me what Devon is famous for?’ She wore a starched, white, traditional schoolmistress uniform which Horatio was having little difficulty imagining her not wearing. Only three hands we
nt up.

  ‘Yes, Klaus?’

  ‘Soya, Ms!’

  ‘Correct. Very good. One star.’ She pressed a button on her desk modem and next to the name ‘Klaus’ on the screen behind her there appeared a third star. Horatio noticed that Oliver also had three, a boy called Timothy had three as well, but no one else had any at all. Anti-elitism seemed to consist of sitting back and watching the cleverest boys answer all the questions.

  From the barely-concealed smirks on the faces of the couple sitting across the other side of the table from him, Horatio surmised Klaus’s parents were ultra-competitive for their son, and scenting victory.

  ‘What is a carrot?’ Both Oliver and Klaus had their hands up this time.

  ‘Oliver.’

  ‘A vegetable, Ms.’

  ‘No. Klaus?’

  ‘It’s a fruit, Ms.’

  ‘Correct. Another star.’ Horatio started rooting for Oliver. Gemma leant over and whispered in his ear, ‘That was a trick question. I’ve a mind to …’

  ‘Who can name the seven deadly sins?’ A number of hands went up this time. ‘Hans?’

  ‘Jealousy, Anger, Unfairness, Ambition, Nationalism, Avarice and …’He was counting them up on his fingers, ‘is Envy one, Ms?’

  ‘No. Of course it isn’t. Envy is good. It’s important because it is only by envying people happier and better off than ourselves that we can make sure that we all grow up to live in a fair and equal society. Now, who can tell me the last one?’

  ‘Sloth?’ asked Klaus.

  ‘No, Klaus, not Sloth either. How can Sloth be a sin when so many people are socially-excluded? Come on now!’

  ‘Lust, Ms?’

  ‘Well done, Oliver. One star.’ Gemma beamed.

  ‘What is lust, Ms?’ asked Oliver. Her smile fell.

  ‘You’ll be learning all about that when you’re ten. Now then, who can name me the Eight Great Unifiers?’

  When Oliver put his hand up, a fraction of a second after Klaus, Horatio noticed that both Gemma and Klaus’s parents had their fingers crossed. From the look of insane concentration on her face it was as though Gemma was trying telepathically to tell her son the answers. Horatio started rooting for Oliver, his own problems taking second place to this clash.

  ‘Oliver.’

  ‘Please, Ms – Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Philip the Second, Louis the Fourteenth, Adolf Hitler, Jacques Delors and …’ There was an agonising few seconds as Oliver tried to remember a seventh: ‘… Helmut Kohl!’ he cried triumphantly. Gemma almost hopped out of her seat.

  ‘Well done, one star. Now then, which brilliant brainbox can name me the fifth Great Unifier? Klaus?’ He shook his head. ‘Anyone?’

  ‘Please, Ms,’ said another little boy, ‘was it Napoleon Bonaparte?’

  ‘It was. Well done, Arthur! Now, which region of the Union did he come from?’

  ‘Corsica, Ms,’ ventured Oliver.

  ‘No.’ Horatio’s eyebrows shot up.

  ‘Was it France, Ms?’

  ‘Yes. One point to Timothy.’ Horatio looked across at Gemma and raised his eyes heavenwards at the teacher’s ignorance, but Gemma hadn’t noticed anything wrong. Well done Oliver, anyhow. Horatio couldn’t remember his own school tests consisting of quite such blatantly federationist propaganda.

  A bell rang outside the door and the teacher looked at her watch. ‘Young Euro-Leaguers can go off to room seven now,’ she called. ‘And afterwards Mr Cameron will be taking Flexible Geometry in the Anderson building.’ There was a great scraping of chairs against floorboards as half the class, all those wearing the blue and gold uniform, left.

  ‘Settle down now the rest of you. We’re going on with the test.’ She turned around to look at the screen. ‘Oliver is on five stars, Klaus and Timmy four. Come on the rest of you. Now, who can tell me when Switzerland joined the Union?’

  ‘Joined, my arse,’ Horatio whispered into Gemma’s ear, ‘it was forced in.’ Gemma nodded.

  ‘Oliver?’

  ‘2036, Ms.’

  ‘Well done. One star.’ Klaus’ hand stayed up. ‘Yes, Klaus?’

  ‘It was actually on 19 April 2036, the hundredth birthday of Founding Father Wilfred Martens, Ms.’

  ‘Well, that really is impressive. Well done. You can have an extra star.’ Just as Oliver was about to build up a lead, thought Horatio, whose own troubles had almost been put out of his mind. Klaus’ mother looked nervously across at Horatio. She was squeezing her husband’s hand, sitting on the edge of her seat. Horatio smiled and gave a nonchalant grin.

  ‘Now children, last question of the test. For two stars,’ said the teacher, who had turned the large map of the Union in the corner of the room back to front and had come round to sit on the edge of the table, which to Horatio’s lecherous delight caused her skirt to ride up her black-stockinged thighs about twenty glorious centimetres. ‘I want you to put all the regions of the Union onto my modem in alphabetical order. Whoever makes it bleep first gets two points. But remember, you have to get all thirty-six and stars will be deducted for bad spelling.’

  There followed about two minutes of silence. As the children tapped frantically into their modems, Horatio studied the wall charts and the teacher’s fine ankles and calves. The bleeper went.

  ‘Well done … Klaus!’ Gemma visibly deflated, and the German couple could not forbear looking across at her and Horatio in triumph. ‘Do you want to call them out to everyone?’ The crop-haired child stood up and read out, in a voice Horatio found irritatingly smug:

  ‘Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Byelorussia, Catalonia, Central Italy, Czechlands, Denmark, Eastern Poland, Estonian Protectorate, Finland, Flemishlands, France, Greater Serbia, Greece, Grossdeutschland, Holland, Hungary, Iceland, Island of Ireland, Latvian Protectorate, Lithuanian Protectorate, Luxembourg, North England, North Italy, Portugal, Scotland, Serb Macedonia, Slovenia, Slovakia, South England, South Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Wales and Wallonia.’

  ‘Very well done. And with seven stars you come top of the test again this week. Bad luck to Oliver who came second with six. Timmy got four. Shame on the rest of you. Next week you must all pull your stockings up.’ The mention of stockings made Horatio redden, as coincidentally he had been fantasising about hers.

  The teacher returned to the other side of her desk and pressed a button. The opening strains of Beethoven’s Ninth filled the small room and the class got up to sing the Union Anthem. Horatio heaved himself to his feet and sang alongside Gemma:

  Peoples of Europe, arise as one!

  From centuries of mistrust and hate.

  Let us march forward towards the sun,

  Partners embracing one common fate!

  Our Founding Fathers led the way,

  And we arose at such a rate.

  That thirty-six peoples now can say,

  ‘Europe is here! Not one moment too late!’

  We’re forging together a common land,

  Protected, equal, unified, free,

  Unbreakable bonds by which we stand,

  An Eden on earth for you and for me!

  It lost much in translation from the German, thought Horatio, but at least it rhymed, almost scanned and went with the music. He wondered whether the seven million socially-excluded Britons thought of the Union as ‘an Eden on earth’. From the scale of the demonstrations taking place in the North English Region earlier that week, he doubted it. As the last bars died away, Oliver ran over and jumped up on Gemma, kissing her.

  ‘Hello Mutti!’

  ‘Ah’m trying to get him to practise his German,’ she explained. ‘Hello my darling, so what happened in the test?’

  ‘Oh, it was Klaus’s turn.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We take it in turns.’ His accent was not so pronouncedly American as hers. Gemma had told Horatio at the party that Oliver’s father had been a German publisher living in New York.

  ‘Does Ms know?’

  ‘I think so. She doesn’t mind
. If you win too often yourself you get told off for being too competitive, so he gets two weeks, then it’s my turn. Sometimes we let Timmy or Rachel win too.’

  ‘Shake hands with Dr Lestoq, Oliver. Ah’ll expect he’ll tell you it was very different in his day. It sure was in mine.’

  ‘Hullo, Oliver. Do call me Horatio. It was, actually.’ They shook hands. ‘Listen, Oliver, I don’t suppose by any chance there’s a back way out of here? There could be someone in the street outside from whom I want to escape.’

  ‘Yessir!’ The boy looked excited by the idea. ‘Follow me.’ He turned to his mother. ‘You can’t come, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You said you were going down to Southampton tomorrow,’ Horatio asked Gemma. ‘Are you driving? Only … I’d love to have a lift to Basingstoke if there’s any way you could drop me off? It’s on the way.’

  ‘Fine, yes, Ah’d like that. Is an oh-nine hundred start OK for you? Shall Ah pick you up?’ Horatio thought quickly. With luck he’d be with Cleo tonight.

  ‘No, I’ll come round to you. Where do you live?’

  ‘Thirty-one Moore Street, Chelsea.’

  ‘See you then.’ They kissed four times.

  ‘Now then young man,’ said Horatio avuncularly, ‘I suspect I know where you’re taking me.’

  ‘Hurry back, honey,’ Gemma called out. Oliver winced at being called that in front of the other children and Horatio felt for him. He’d have a word with Gemma about prep school etiquette one day. They set off down two flights of steps and off towards the changing rooms at the rear of the building.

  They were full of boys and girls changing into Euro-Youth League uniforms, scarves and toggles everywhere. With some help from Oliver, Horatio squeezed himself through the lavabo window at the back. He dropped feet first onto the playground, almost winding himself. He took a suck of Salbutamol, crossed the tarmac quickly and emerged out onto the street.

  He was free.

  CHAPTER 14

  20.25 MONDAY 3 MAY