by Weldon, Fay
An unknown factor, this. The Council rather regretted having disposed of Mew. Further interrogation might have yielded necessary information. However, what was done was done.
No. 7 An attacker willing to pay the price can always penetrate the strongest defences.
Nothing is for nothing. There might well be a price to pay. That price might even be death. There was no doubt that the pumping of the CS gas, the flushing out of the vermin, would be construed by Downstairs as an escalation of the conflict, and retaliation must be expected, of the undisciplined, individual kind. The General hoped the Council were aware of this. They were. And prepared to pay the price! Baf revealed that the new form of CS gas used in the cylinders could cause death to women and children in some circumstances: that is to say, anyone below a certain body weight. More harmful, on the whole, to foreign nationals than Western Europeans, in whom, of course, it could cause wasting, paralysis, and other side effects…
No. 8 Successful defence requires depth and reserves.
Should the gas attack have for any reason failed, should the servants retaliate before offensive action could be accomplished, and come welling up the stairs like a host of cockroaches, Baf’s weapons would be waiting to challenge them, wipe them out. Baf was to set them up, in readiness.
‘Look here,’ said Baf, ‘that’s something of a risk. I’m a salesman, not a technician.’
The General said the risk was acceptable. Weaponry should not be kept idle in reserve position.
Napoleon’s two greatest defeats – at Leipzig and Waterloo – were the result of this failure to give proper credence to Verity No. 8. Baf was to get going. The bureau bookcase was moved aside. The grenade rocket on its silver matchbox was positioned outside the green baize door, to mow down possible attackers surging up the staircase. The tiny, tiny machine-gun was placed at the Council’s fall-back position on the first landing, for use in the unlikely event of the first defensive barrage failing. It looked just like a child’s toy, left idly on the stairs. Piers stirred in his sleep on the dining-room sofa. He had just such a toy at home.
‘Interesting to see if it works,’ said the General.
‘Quite,’ said Baf.
No. 9 Superior strength always wins.
It was possible, the General said, that agitators and subversives had provided the servants with weaponry, but he had not had that impression from Mew. The Council would win! Defeat was unthinkable.
No. 10 Surprise substantially enhances combat power.
‘Let’s not hang about,’ said Victor. ‘Let’s just go in and get ’em! I have a meeting on Monday morning. When Gloabal send the helicopter, I don’t want any unnecessary delays.’
But the General continued, relentlessly, with his checklist.
No. 11 Firepower kills, disrupts, suppresses and causes dispersion.
The advantage of a grenade attack through the door would be that the dispersion of the enemy forces would then be no problem. They’d all be dead. So powerful were the grenades, Baf claimed, although only the size of a cherry each – the Knife Box carried six in all – that what explosive power did not destroy, shock would. Burial would be an eventual problem, and the prevention of disease, and so forth, but these problems could be deferred until later Council meetings.
No. 12 Combat activities are often slower, less productive and less efficient than anticipated.
The overkill factor of the grenades was great enough for Upstairs not to worry too much about lack of efficiency. These were, in fact, ideal field conditions in which to test the weapons.
No. 13 Combat is too complex to be described in a single, simple aphorism.
‘I think we’ve got it licked this time,’ said the General. ‘I think for once the single, simple aphorism will be ours. “We wiped ’em out!’”
The thirteen verities having been checked and discussed, there was no way of avoiding action.
While Panza, Sergei, Victor and Murray removed the bureau bookcase from its protective position in front of the Green Baize Door, Baf took out his knife box and prepared the grenade attachment. The six grenades were to follow one another down the launcher, a thin, sleek, shiny tube. Baf set the notch for maximum effectiveness. Set lower down the scale – according to the PR handout – the weapon could be used merely to deafen and stun, and so was invaluable for the control of certain crowds. But this was war! Should the enemy come rushing up the stairs, should any survive the onslaught of Baf’s grenades, they would encounter the machine-gun or bullet sprayer, which, when armed and directed, issued a spray of tiny pressurised bullets which grew larger and larger as they flew through the liberty and lightness of air. These would penetrate and explode, so great was the force behind them, when they struck solid matter or flesh and blood. If any survived this, they would then have to face the righteous anger of their attackers, which all believed would be invincible.
Baf chipped away at the green baize door with an ordinary penknife. It took him a full half hour to make a hole big enough for the insertion of his firing tube.
The General looked at the six cherry-sized metal balls and wished to God he had a proper, solid, old-fashioned machine-gun: a tilt of Baf’s hand and he was as likely to get his own forces as the enemy’s but it couldn’t be helped. The proper way to use the grenade launcher was to embed it in the wall – unnoticeable to the casual eye – and activate it electronically from a distance, but needs must, and there was an emergency manual activator, and this Baf must use. Still, he would be interested to see what happened. If the weapons were as effective as Baf suggested, he might well make representations to the Ministry of Defence, on their behalf.
‘Ready,’ said Baf. He looked around the faces which crowded around him. Their future, their safety, was in his hands. He was frightened: an emotion he had never felt in his life before – too young for the responsibility of life and death. Supposing it went wrong? ‘Go in there and get ’em!’ said Joan Lumb.
‘Blast them to hell!’ said Victor, her true brother in the end. Breeding will out.
‘Baf, darling, do what you must,’ cried Muffin. ‘I’m with you all the way.’
‘Get ’em quick,’ said Murray, roused from his nauseous stupor, ‘before they get us!’
And there were other, more pompous, remarks from Sergei and Panza: ‘Their foul and aggressive deeds must not go unpunished. This riff-raff must be taught a lesson—’
‘But supposing there are children?’ ventured Shirley. Victor was finally irritated with his wife. She was hopelessly domestic.
‘If there are children,’ said Joan Lumb briskly, ‘they are not there legally, and the sooner they aren’t there the better.’
And Bella spoke at last, ‘Children? So what? They would only grow up to be criminals and murderers, like their parents. Fire, Baf! What’s the matter? Chicken?’
So Baf overcame his hesitation – pure superstition – and let the cherries fall into the dark on the other side of the green baize, and pushed the button in what he thought was the correct way – one, two, three, four, five, six times – and on the sixth press that was the end of everything, so suddenly no one had time to say or think anything at all. Baf was, after all – and he was the first to admit it – a salesman and not a technician. The armed, but not fired, CS gas cylinder was activated by the grenade blast and sparked an explosion in the napalm thrower and the tiny howitzer and the strategic nuclear cannon and in the space of seconds that was that. Baf had neglected to close the knife box, as when a child he had once neglected to put the lid back on the carton of fireworks on November 5th. Trouble was bound to ensue.
29
Only two people survived the explosion the night the Shrapnel Academy went up. The other 331, for there were 333 souls in residence that night, all died. The ones who escaped were Mew and Ivor. They owed their good fortune to the fact that the small half-underground section of the Shrapnel Academy which housed the laundry chute remained relatively intact. It was a later Victorian addition to the
building, and faced on the outside with Portland stone, which largely protected those inside from the blast and heat. The blast was enormous: snow was melted across a one-mile diameter. Bricks, mortar, stone, furniture, bodies, statues, trees, snow, all hurled into the air, and whirled and whizzed about a bit, and fell again, in shreds.
Edna the taxi driver saw the explosion from the cosy room twelve miles away where she nursed her cold and sat out the blizzard. She saw a singeing, blinding glare on the other side of the woods, so that the line of distant hills could be seen quite clearly, as she sometimes could on one of those cloudy, damp evenings when visibility was oddly greater than ever it was on the brightest day.
“That’s really beautiful,’ she said aloud.
Then there was a surprisingly short sharp bang, and then other noises, messier and more protracted, whooshings and roarings and gnashings, and then a sudden rush of wind which rattled her windows, and then silence. The snow had stopped: she could see stars above: it was as if the explosion had whipped the clouds away: only over where the Shrapnel Academy was – well, had been, thought Edna, because that was surely the Shrapnel Academy going up, and now what would happen to her taxi trade? – a dusty cloud obscured the sky.
The two survivors stayed where they were and waited for help to arrive. They knew it would. Heroic efforts would be made, in spite of the snow. Police, ambulances and fire engines would presently arrive. Insurance investigators and journalists would drop from the sky. Cameras would whirr, newsreader voices lower in respect for so many dead. Such a terrible tragedy! Funds would be raised, every possible kindness shown. The good will of man would be made apparent. Mew would have a story for the Woman’s Times so extraordinary it would not be believed, and not printed. Angered, she would accept an offer from The Times, which paid a good deal better, and did not discourage the wearing of high heels. Ivor would go home to Debbie-Anne and stop brooding about Bella Morthampton: there is no point in lusting after the dead.
Reader, I know you do not like this ending to the story. It seems a cheat just to blow everything and everyone up. I wish there was some other possible ending, but there isn’t. That’s the way the world ends, not with a whimper but a bang, the way it began.
But I will give you something else – just a soupçon, as my grandmother, always a finicky eater, would say when accepting soup. Grass and flowers have grown up through the rubble of what used to be the Shrapnel Academy. It takes only a season or so for Nature to reassert itself. An owl swoops to take a mouse: a spider shrouds a fly. Snap, snaffle, nibble, crunch, gone! That’s Nature for you. But little eddies of lively air do tend to form at a certain point, at first-floor level, above the rubbly green. You can even see the motes dancing on a bright evening at just about the place where Mother Teresa was situated, there where Baf and Muffin took their spectacular pleasure, and butterflies dancing where the cupboard beneath the stairs used to be, which Acorn and Hilda would frequent. And if you listen you seem to hear a voice, mixed up with the songs of birds. It is Joan Lumb: she is speaking to Murray. She is saying, ‘Murray, that was not what we meant at all: it got out of control. But, Murray, wasn’t it all fun!’ Ah, fun: oh, Henry Shrapnel! And how forgiving the God of Love is, after all, that he should have given Joan Lumb another chance to love Murray and suffer for it, for certainly not in this life or the next will Murray ever love Joan Lumb.
We hope you enjoyed this book.
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Fay Weldon
More books by Fay Weldon
An invitation from the publisher
First published in Great Britain in 1986 by Hodder and Stoughton Ltd
This eBook first published in the UK in 2014 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Fay Weldon, 1986
Cover image © Sniegirova Mariia
The moral right of Fay Weldon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (E) 9781781858035
Head of Zeus Ltd
Clerkenwell House
45-47 Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.headofzeus.com
Contents
Cover
Welcome Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Copyright
Victims, liberators, blackmailers, healers, and ghosts—they’re just a few of the fascinating men and women you’ll meet in this stellar, boundary-defying anthology.
From a heartless lover to a therapist who’s exposed for being a child hater, Weldon’s characters search for meaning, betray their vows, take pleasure in others’ misfortunes, or get pushed out of the family manse by their grasping offspring...
Table of Contents
Contents
Cover
Welcome Page
Tales of Wicked Women
End of the Line
Run and Ask Daddy If He Has Any More Money
In the Great War (II)
Tales of Wicked Men
Wasted Lives
Love Amongst the Artists
Leda and the Swan
Tales of Wicked Children
Tale of Timothy Bagshott
Valediction
From the Other Side
Through a Dustbin, Darkly
A Good Sound Marriage
Of Love, Pain and Good Cheer
Pains
A Question of Timing
Red on Black
Going to the Therapist
Santa Claus’s New Clothes
Baked Alaska
The Pardoner
Bibliographical Note
Copyright
Tales of Wicked Women
End of the Line
Run and Ask Daddy If He Has Any More Money
In the Great War (II)
End of the Line
‘There’s a girl called Weena Dodds on the end of the line,’ said Elaine Desmond.
‘Tell her I’m busy,’ said Defoe Desmond, her husband. They were fifty-fiveish. Both were personable and attractive. They lived in a secluded Grade I listed property.
‘She’s from the New Age Times,’ said Elaine. ‘And she wants to talk to you about Red Mercury.’
‘Red Mercury’s a hoax,’ he said, ‘and the New Age Times is a streak of shit. Tell her to go away.’
Elaine couched his response in gentler terms, but Weena Dodds would not go away.
‘What’s he fucking afraid of?’ Weena demanded. ‘What’s he so guilty about? Ask him!’
Elaine did.
‘I am afraid of nothing
and guilty about nothing,’ said Defoe Desmond to his wife. ‘Tell Weena Dodds she can have her interview.’
Elaine explained to Weena that Drewlove Village was at the end of the line. Weena would need to change at Westbury Junction, and start out from London at 9 a.m. to arrive at midday. Then she should take a taxi. The interview would last an hour. Elaine was sorry she could not offer lunch, but there would at least be coffee.
‘All that way and no lunch,’ said Weena to her editor, Dervish Wilton. ‘What a bitch she sounds. Just like my mother.’
‘Find out why the Defoe Desmond show was really axed,’ said the editor of the New Age Times, who was thirtyish and had dark eyes as cold as Stalin’s. ‘You’re not going for the food.’
‘I’m going First Class,’ warned Weena Dodds. ‘I’m not roughing it in Standard.’
‘You’re lucky I don’t make you cycle down,’ said the editor. ‘There’s a dozen Vegan girls out there already lining up for your job.’
‘Let ’em line,’ said Weena. She was safe enough. She blow-jobbed the editor on Friday afternoons, and not many Vegan girls would do that these days, not even for the sake of employment. The old worlds and the new criss-crossed each other. You could turn them both to your advantage if you had the instinct. She was a pretty girl with a prim mouth and wide eyes, a smooth high forehead and a great deal of frizzy hair, and a bosom plumper than she wanted it to be. Sometimes she shaved the hair back from her forehead: then she had a bland, medieval look. But it was a problem when the hair was growing back. She had to stay at home.
‘What do you reckon the girl from the New Age Times looks like?’ asked Defoe.
‘Lank-haired,’ said Elaine, ‘from the sound of her voice. It had a nasal whine.’
‘Ah,’ said Defoe. He was sketching a nuclear warhead on his architectural drawing board, prior to Weena’s arrival.
Six slugs of Red Mercury backed six slugs of plutonium, all focusing in on a central point, where he helpfully wrote, ‘POW! CRITICAL!’
