by A. N. Wilson
‘Wasn’t that awful?’
‘And her snapping and snarling at L.P. when they put on their coats to go.’
‘I didn’t hear that.’
‘Wasn’t it funny when L.P. asked poor Esmé whether she’d rather be burgled or raped?’
‘No, no,’ laughed Martina, ‘he said, “I’d rather be raped than burgled – wouldn’t you?”‘
‘Her face!’
‘It was true what I said – the police did take samples from my fingers, DNA samples.’
‘Will they ever follow it up, do you think?’ asked Mary. ‘One can usually rely on the police to be inefficient.’
‘They haven’t taken samples from … a certain person.’
‘Ah, the beautiful boy!’
‘You’re not to touch.’
‘Aubrey was very smitten with him,’ said Mary – and then in the gravelly mode of Worledge, ‘The Legion will root out perverts!’
Both women giggled.
‘Piet isn’t a criminal,’ said Martina authoritatively. ‘It was perfectly sensible of me to see that at once.’
‘He did have a knife – you told me.’
‘He waved it like a toy. He just wanted someone to take some notice of him. His story is so sad.’
‘If we believe it,’ said Mary Much.
‘We do not have to believe every word people say about themselves. The lies people tell about themselves are often more revealing of character than supposedly accurate memories.’
‘So you want to believe he is an orphan.’
‘I do believe that part – about his mother being dead. I don’t know I believe that she was a famous actress. But – being brought up by his grandmother – this I believe.’
There was silence for a while, as Mary caressed and massaged the hair and neck of her friend.
‘He’s a dangerous game, darling,’ she said to Martina’s reflection.
‘If you say so,’ said Martina, ‘but as you may have noticed – I have lived dangerously.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
As the boy waited in the shadows, he heard taped human voices on his Walkman and the familiar jangle of his own multifarious selves.
‘Don’t make me – I’ll only make a fool of you.’
‘Course you’ve got to come to the dinner, you silly cow. Just don’t say anything.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Jesus!’
This exchange took place between Worledge and his wife. She was a cunt and all. That stuff about black boys being more likely to nick something than white boys? That racist filth spewing out of her stinking quim of a mouth? It had been as much as Jeeves could manage, to stop Murderous Moron slitting her throat in front of her fucking husband.
Boys, boys! Jeeves had intervened.
It had not stopped MM pocketing the kitchen knife. They had a good supply of them now. Sabatier. One day, he’d steal that service revolver of Father Vivyan’s. Had that in Africa. He’d shown them how it worked. Safety catch. Ammo. The fucking lot, wicked. But his latest thing. He pressed the rewind button.
‘Don’t make me – I’ll only make a fool of you.’
‘Course you’ve got to come to the dinner, you silly cow.’
It impressed them that Lennox – or was it one of the broads? Yeah, them more like – had planted the bugging devices. How many more of them existed? The offices of all them fucking fools in LenMar House – they’d be bugged, stood to reason. But this simple little thing. No wires. Just clip it on. You’re sorted. It would have to’ve been the titty-ones who thought of that. They were cunning, that pair of dykes, unlike Mr Fat. How many receivers were there? Lots, probably. He’d withdrawn from the dinner – had to go for a slash, run upstairs, just a quick one. Liked the idea of pissing in her toilet. Liked putting his arse where her fanny had dribbled its piss. Nice one. And there it was – on her fucking bathroom table, this little box. He’d pressed ON and fuck-a-duck man, he could hear the whole fucking dinner party – the shit, the total shit with his silly-cow wife – Derek he were called – saying:
‘Six tell-tale signs to see if the vicar’s an arse-merchant. A bit of fun, a bit of fun … Very much tongue in cheek,’ he was adding.
It had been a matter of seconds. The receiver was inside his shirt, stuffed it into his Calvin Klein elastic. The mike? Stood to reason it was somewhere on the shit himself, the one with a voice like a concrete mixer. Derek. Felt it easy when the dinner was over, helped him on with his overcoat. Stupid tosser, with a fucking mike pinned to his jacket and he didn’t even see it.
Playing the tape back further, Tuli was able to listen to all the things which Worledge had been saying about his hosts before the dinner.
‘They do say Martina isn’t Swiss at all – some people think her mother got that face from the Gestapo … Threatening to say who the dad was … yeah, Martina’s dad … I’m not joking …’
The crackling noise made it difficult to hear the next bit but someone had obviously asked who Martina’s dad really was.
‘Think of her eyes – those cold, staring eyes …’
The concrete mixer laughed, and added, ‘Great story anyway.’
You could hear the other person repeating his question.
‘That’s what they say – the Gestapo beat up the old dear because she’d got pregnant by Adolf Hitler.’
‘So Martina’s …?’
‘ Great story … great story …’
There was more stuff, about Mary Much: about men she’d fucked even though she was a lesbian, about how she interfered too much in the newspapers owned by Lennox, about how when he – Derek Concrete Mixer – became editor of the Legion, he’d have difficulties with Muchie-Muchie.
‘I might have to drive a wedge between her and Len. If I can. If I can.’
When the Guards officer heard Derek Worledge’s conceited gravelly voice, he wanted to silence it for ever – maybe with one of those rabbit punches? Like they learned in self-defence? At Happy Band? The Guards officer fancied Mary Much. He liked the fact that Mary wanted to take him away from Martina. He intuited that she had always been doing this, from the start of the ‘friendship’ between the pair, preying on her.
This was the exact spot, where he now stood in the shadows, where they’d gathered before; where Murderous Moron got the slicer to the little Paki bastard’s ear-hole and the Guards officer had had to drawl, Cool it, man, and …
That was before Jeeves came. Jeeves had the real cool. Jeeves now controlled them all. He’d promised the kid: he could take his revenge on Mr Currey, bloody pedalo like you read about in The Daily Legion. On Lennox, for all he done to their mother. But they must be patient.
Revenge, Jeeves had told them all, is a dish best served cold.
‘If it crosses your mind to tell anyone, I can get you sectioned. Locked up. I’m gentle with you. They wouldn’t be gentle with you in prison.’
That was what that uphill gardener had told him – the kid still whimpered when he remembered. Mr Currey had told him, You’re enjoying this – look at that – nice one! But Jeeves said just ‘cause you got a hard-on when they was doing – that didn’t mean you was a fucking bum-bandit yourself. Murderous Moron would be allowed to finish with Currey. Meanwhile – silence was the Name of the Game, especially now they’re wired for sound. Hello – we’ve got some action.
The mincing figure of Aubrey Bird, the diarist on The Daily Legion, came out of the house. They could hear him calling out his farewells. Slowly does it. Safe distance. If he hails a cab, let him go. But that one – you gotta be joking. He’s taking the night air: even though it’s still pissing with rain, he’s cruising. On to the bus – quick, quick, they ran. Just caught the 14, this one’s going down Piccadilly. Yes – silly old fucker, though he can hardly get up the stairs, he’s going on the top of the bus to see if he can meet with some trade. Rub his horrible little trouser leg against a boy.
He was dressed, Aubrey Bird, in ‘shorty’ white mac and a
little brown trilby hat. He wore a dark blue suit and Gucci loafers with little gold buckles and shiny black leather tassels. And yes, yes! Hyde Park Corner has been passed, and he is finding his way down the stairs again. Nothing doing up there, then. Where now? We’re at the bottom of Piccadilly and he’s got off the bus, and turned up a narrow street. Brick Street. The darkened doorway of a public lavatory shields him from the rain. The silly old bugger creeps inside.
In Redgauntlet Road, the disappearance of one of Martina’s receivers had been noticed almost at once.
‘Think – think calmly,’ urged Mary Much, who hated it when Martina went into overdrive.
‘I am thinking – and I’m thinking I’ve been a bloody fool. It must be Piet who stole it – who else, for Christ’s sake …’
‘Martina – he wouldn’t dare. He knows that the minute he steps out of line, it’s curtains for him – the police, Borstal, prison, even.’
‘Suppose he’s stupid.’
‘He isn’t stupid. That night – the night he came – you at once saw his potential. Martina, he’s our project – he’s so much enjoying this, he’s not going to spoil it all by pilfering things. No-one of our other guests went round the house while we were eating and …’
‘Switch it on – switch it on,’ urged Martina. ‘Then we’ll listen. Suppose he still has it switched on – then we’ll hear.’
Mary Much murmured, ‘God, you’re brilliant.’
She had her perv side. In certain company, she loved to get gay men to tell her all their fantasies. Aubrey Bird had told her – she did not know whether this was true – that he liked to take rent boys home and perform surgical operations on them. He had the full outfit – green surgical cap and mask, surgical gloves and boots. Some of them found his renditions of the task so realistic that they had screamed or passed out, when he presented them with liver or sausages which he had ready on a plate but which, in the intimacy of the moment, they believed to have been removed by the scalpel of ‘Dr Arbuthnot’.
‘And your fist, darling – tell us – what did you do with your fist?’ Mary would ask with eager panting intakes of breath.
It was therefore Mary who was first to have her suspicions when she heard the whispered tones which crackled through the receiver in Martina’s bedroom.
‘Don’t let’s stay here … let’s … ooh! That’s nice. Let me feel yours … I’m a doctor … Would you like to come and see my surgery?’
‘It’s Aubrey,’ said Mary calmly.
‘What did I tell you?’ Martina exclaimed. It was one of her more endearing character traits, in Mary’s mind, that she claimed prescience for matters which were, strictly, unpredictable.
‘Where do you think he is?’ Mary asked.
‘Hampstead Heath – wherever it is they go.’
Something had clearly been whispered, or grunted, in Aubrey’s ear, because they could now hear him laughing, and the atmosphere of sound had changed. He had moved from indoors to out of doors.
‘What, here – not here?’ He was speaking in his quite audible and recognizable voice.
‘What was he thinking, stealing a bugging device?’ asked Mary.
‘He’s taken one of the recorder receivers and he’s taken a listening device. He’s a gossip columnist. Equals spy.’
‘Yes – but he’s so obviously going to be found out.’
‘Maybe he’s stupid enough to think he’s taken the only mike, or the only receiver.’
‘Sh-sh …’
‘It’s cold here,’ Aubrey was saying. ‘Wouldn’t you like to come back to my place? I don’t want … This is a multi-storey … Unless you have a car?’
‘They’re in …’
‘A multi-storey car park. I can hear. Sh, sh – what did I tell you?’
‘No – not here – ooh …’
There followed some indeterminate noises of bumps and thumps. They were in fact the laying of Aubrey Bird on the concrete floor of Level D of the multi-storey car park behind the Hyde Park Corner Hilton; the removal of his Gucci loafers; the stuffing of his socks into his mouth, and the rather crude but actual enactment of something which he had up to this point in his life only performed on others, and then in fantasy.
‘The sound’s gone dead,’ said Mary Much with very distinct disappointment in her tone.
‘The silly old bugger,’ said Martina.
Some Italian con artists, who had spent the small hours fleecing alcoholics in a Park Lane casino, spotted the body of Aubrey Bird in the headlights of their Alfa Romeo at half past three. It was they who alerted the man who checked the tickets at the car park exit. An ambulance would come about half an hour later. Some twenty minutes after that, a feral cat who lived in the shadows of the car park, and fed normally on the fish and chips left by the prostitutes there, ate two rather gristly pieces of offal which it found on the concrete floor.
TWENTY-NINE
Rachel Pearl lay alone in her flat. It was in a small apartment block built during the 1990s. The flat consisted of two rooms: a large living room, whose back wall was entirely lined with books, and a smaller bedroom. Both rooms had plate-glass windows which overlooked the river. The Thames had always been interwoven with Rachel’s inner and imaginative life since her early childhood in Barnes, and walks along the towpath to Putney or Ham. This eastern region where she now lived had been an unknown world to her until she had landed the job, and her lover had bought her the flat. (It was within walking distance of LenMar House.)
Sometimes her lover came to spend the night there, but more often their time together was a matter of snatched lunch-hours or afternoons. Rachel very much regretted the fact that he was married, but she had learnt for much of the time to blot out this fact. She hated him talking about his wife or children, preferring to think, if not actually to believe, that when he was not with her, he ceased to exist, and plunged into a kind of nothingness until his next reappearance. This treating of him as the genie in a magic lamp who appeared and disappeared at unpredictable moments enabled her to get by, though much of the time she was lonely. She was angry with him for letting her love him, angry with him for buying her this flat and making her not only his dependant but also a creature of The Daily Legion.
She had been his lover – on and off – since she was at university. She had been vice president of the Oxford Union and helped to organize the debates. This House believes England is Done For; this House rejoices in the End of History; this House does not believe in God. Arch, silly undergraduateish motions such as this were debated each week in term-time. Rachel’s best friend Kitty Chell thought the Union was woefully uncool, and she was right. But – at that age one could spell things out – Rachel had said:
‘Kitty, you have your world – I have Mummy and Daddy and Barnes.’
‘What world? You don’t just mean ‘cause Papa’s a lord?’
‘Partly – no listen. It’s not just Throxton Winnards’ – the large old house at which Rachel had spent part of the Long Vac with her friend – ‘or your dad’s title – of course it’s not. But they are part of it – your parents knew everyone and that’s quite exciting. If I say, Oh, L. P. Watson, you don’t say, I read his book – you say, Oh, Papa had him to stay, or He goes out with a cousin of mine.’
‘Who’s L. P. Watson?’
Even at that stage, before she’d met the man, Rachel felt protective of him. She thought Kitty was being mean to pretend not to have heard of him. She admired the travel books and Conversations with a Lion: in those days she read the newspapers sparingly, so was hardly aware of L.P. the controversialist.
Every week, three or four show-offs, grown-ups, would come up from London in their evening dress and take part in one of the Oxford Union debates. The week that L.P. came, he was accompanied by an ancient Catholic peer, a ‘maverick’ Labour MP (this appeared to be an adjective one applied to any MP who had not actually undergone a lobotomy, that is, anyone capable of thinking for themselves), and a lady novelist who doubled as
an agony aunt in a newspaper Rachel never read. She had known, during that early and disgusting dinner – grand clothes, cheap wine, filthy food – that L. P. Watson fancied her. He did not try anything on – she would have been disgusted if he had done – that night. He was the soul of politeness, and had shaken her hand after the debate, when he went back to the station. As he did so, he’d said he hoped they’d meet again.
‘Perhaps we shall,’ she’d said – and she had smiled her radiant smile.
The train had come in to Oxford station.
‘Next week?’ he’d called through the train window.
When Kitty Chell came back from a party, Rachel had kept her up for hours, wondering whether she was on the verge of something big.
A letter – ‘Dear Miss Pearl’ – had arrived at her college two days later, asking her to dinner in London. Mon Plaisir. Monmouth Street. Eight fifteen.
That was seven years ago, and loving L.P., as she now did, had become a habit. She knew – moreover, she believed – that sleeping with a married man was a low trick, which could only lead to trouble. She’d not exactly quarrelled with Kitty over it, but her friend’s assertion that L.P. was ‘exploiting’ her, too obvious to be gainsaid, caused a cooling of their early close relationship. When she began to realize that she was not the only woman with whom he committed adultery, she had no friend to whom she could pour out the pain: she hugged it to herself as a guilty secret. She knew that he could not possibly love her as she loved him – else how could he sleep around casually?
One of the worst aspects of the whole affair was that she would never be sure whether her advancement in the world of journalism would have been achieved by her own efforts. She was perfectly confident of her abilities and more than confident of her own intelligence. Whether she would command such a salary (at twenty-eight she was earning the same as a country doctor), she doubted. And his purchase of the flat, which she had accepted, made her feel trapped. She saw her lover with two quite different parts of her intelligence. One part of her nature was able to see that he had almost wilfully ignored his talent – who was it who ‘thrust his gift in prison till it died’ in a poem? – and chosen to mix with people less intelligent than himself. This figure was a ruined archangel, whom she pitied but also dreaded, fearing that his company would drag her down, teach her habits of drunkenness, philistinism which were alien to her. The other part of her mind, the docile part, was in love with him quite simply, and felt very pleased and proud that she was the secret love of the famous L. P. Watson.
