‘No.’ Then she amended, ‘Not yet. One day, perhaps.’ And, tiredly, ‘Everything in the world is perhaps.’
It rained for hours while I wondered if there was water rising in Billy’s tenement flat. (It was not. His quarters were on a higher floor, the ‘family’ he looked after was 70,000 strong.)
He came around very late that night. I was in bed but I heard Mum say, ‘Dry your feet on this. You needn’t have come back tonight. Francis told me about the interview.’
I could not hear his answer; his voice was dull and tired. She asked, ‘Are your family safe?’ and again he muttered.
When they came in to see me his clothes were muddy, his shoes jammed into his belt and his trousers rolled up to his white, bony knees, I guessed that the water was not very high, that the Swill weren’t swimming. He sat on my bed, smelling faintly of chewey, while Mum hovered, motherly and apprehensive, and he told me what instinct had suggested, that the morning’s happenings were secrets. ‘You don’t tell anybody about Mrs Parkes. Not anybody!’
‘I don’t know anything to tell.’
‘You will. I’m taking you to her on Friday night. And you don’t talk about it! Specially you don’t mention it to the other kids at school. Understand?’
I didn’t, quite, but I said, ‘Yes.’
He pressed, ‘Do you know why not?’ and I had to shake my head. ‘Because they won’t believe what you tell and they’ll make fun of you. Or maybe they’ll repeat it at home and their parents’ll make trouble.’
‘About me being able to do figures?’
He reached a long arm to gather me in while he said, ‘Because they can’t stand for people to be better than them.’ I had stopped thinking about Dad but that brought him back. ‘You’re going up, Francis, and they won’t like that. They’ll take out spite on you.’
I wriggled around to see his face. ‘Up?’ But he was watching Mum. ‘Do you mean out of here?’
Still watching her, he nodded. ‘But not yet awhile.’
‘Away from Swill?’
‘One day.’ Perhaps he felt the leap of my heart. ‘Does that mean a lot to you?’
‘Yes, Billy,’ I said.
‘Then you know better than to talk. Ever!’ He turned my face up. ‘You made a hit with Mrs Parkes.’
‘I only said I’d do sums for her.’
Mum was in a flutter, unusual in her. ‘I hope this – I wouldn’t want him—’
Billy gave her his special smile for getting his own way. ‘And I wouldn’t let it happen.’ What he said always went with Mum, even when she suspected it wasn’t above aboard, which it often wasn’t; she had fallen into trusting him.
I asked the question that had bothered me during the interview: ‘Why did she take six hours to do her sums? She must have a cally.’
The answer to that was a lesson in the deviousness of the world, introducing me to the idea of a State that took money from its owners under the name of taxes, duties, excise and levies. He did not say this was unjust but I found myself on the side of Mrs Parkes who wanted to evade these impositions and who had been nice to me.
‘But Finance Squad coppers can trace cally and comp operations, even recreate them after wipe-out, so they always know what money people have. That makes it hard to keep two sets of accounts without getting caught. But if she has a cally that sprouts answers without using a key or a chip, she can write them on bits of paper. And who looks for records on bits of paper any more?
Besides, it can be microfilmed and hid – hidden – in a dot in an old book. So only you and Mrs Parkes will know what’s on the bits of paper.’ He gave me a play punch on the jaw, ‘Get it?’
‘Yes,’ but I was hazy. As time went on I got it very well but now I was concerned with my own prospects. A fine future at some distant remove was all very well, but, ‘Will I get a present or something?’
‘Or something, and plenty of it.’
After he went, Mum whispered, ‘I’m sorry Francis,’ and I answered, ‘I’m not.’ She was worrying her heart out at having sold her son into a child labour racket. For an hour a week! That bothered her more than any whiff of illegality.
After she had gone to bed I puzzled over the flood pictures on the newscasts; they never showed the city, only the country. It was true, and in some way sinister, that the Swill were rarely mentioned on the news.
I put shoes on and sneaked quietly into the backyard; in one corner I could climb the fence and see down the street past the towers. The moon was high and shining like silver on a mirror which should have been the street leading down to the towers. But the mirror rippled. I was seeing water that had risen from the river and was only a block or so distant. The street slope was gentle and we did not seem to be very high above the flood.
I watched for what seemed hours, waiting for the water to climb the footpath and our fence, but it came no nearer, and finally sleep got the better of entrancement.
In the morning I could see right down the street and the water had gone. Mum explained about flash floods that receded as fast as they came but the triv carried no news about it. She said softly, ‘Poor Billy.’
But what about poor Francis? I understood Teddy’s triumph in escape and my determination was reaffirmed that I would never fall closer to the Swill than this house on this barely safe corner. Instinct suggested that Mrs Parkes held the key to the future, that Billy had lifted me higher than he knew.
8
Though Billy could speak reasonably good English when he tried, he never mixed with Sweet. For one thing, they would never have let him near them; they saw Swill as beggars and criminals, which was near enough to the truth. So there was painfully much he did not know, and it showed sharply when he called to take me to Mrs Parkes.
He brought a parcel of clothes with him and used my bedroom for changing. ‘I couldn’t wear this stuff down there – half Newport’d be sniffing after what I was up to.’
When he appeared, dressed for the Sweet streets, even I knew it was all wrong and Mum asked, ‘Where on Earth did you get those clothes?’
Misunderstanding, he told her bluntly, ‘Stole ’em.’
She must have been laughing inside but not wanting to hurt him, ‘What sort of Sweet do you want to be taken for?’
‘Little Sweet. Workman, like gardening or cleaning.’
There was no way around telling him, ‘Billy, the grey denim shirt is right but nothing else is.’
He said defensively, ‘I had to take what I could get,’ angry as a kid caught in a boast. ‘What’s wrong, anyway?’
‘The jacket, to start with.’
‘Everybody wears leather jackets. You see ’em all the time on the triv.’
Mum said gently, ‘The triv is deceptive. Workmen wear plasti-leather. That jacket is real leather, tailored. It would cost a fortnight of unskilled wages. You might wear it to a sporting event.’
He sat down, unable to argue. ‘What else?’
‘The trousers. Workmen wear a heavier weave with belts, not tailored waists. And green shoes are for dancing. You might wear a cap going to work but at night you would have a blue or black beret.’
He said flatly, ‘So I’ve buggered it.’
Mum hesitated over something she would have preferred not to say, and in the end said it: ‘Fred . . . my husband . . . was about your height. A little heavier . . . I kept some of his clothes for the boys, for later on.’ I thought she was going to cry but if she did it was in her own room where she kept Dad’s clothes in a trunk. She brought out the heavy trousers he had worn in wet weather, a plastic jacket I remembered from country drives, a plastic belt and the cheap beret he had worn for polishing the duco. She said, ‘It’s only sentiment. You might as well have them.’
Everything was slightly too big for Billy’s narrow frame, but when he squared his shoulders he looked passably right. Dad’s shoes were too small for his long bones but Mum painted the green horrors with brown Plastidye and said they would do well enough at night.
<
br /> He muttered the resentful thanks of hurt pride, but Mum laughed at him and said he’d made her face enough hard facts and how did he like his own medicine? He laughed a bit and said he didn’t and things were all right again until she thought of something else. ‘What if some policeman is suspicious enough to question you? Are you carrying a knife?’
He patted his armpit and Mum held out her hand. ‘Leave it here.’
‘No, lady. Oh, no.’
‘Carrying a concealed weapon is a criminal offense, in Sweet territory at any rate.’
‘I know that. It’s—’ He did not seem to know what it was, but said, ‘A man’s naked without his knife.’
Mum lost her temper, just a little. ‘That’s Swill talk! You’re trying to be Sweet. What’s your story if you are questioned, with a knife in your shirt and my son in tow?’
It was a shock to see Mum outface him. He opened up his shirt, unstrapped the sheath and threw it on the table. When he spoke, it was not about the knife. ‘I don’t like you thinking about me as Swill. I try, don’t I?’
Now Mum blushed, the fiery red of detection in snobbery. ‘I don’t think of you like that, Billy!’
Of course she did. How could she not? He knew. ‘Yes you do.’ He took my hand. ‘Come on, young Francis, there’s Sweet money for the picking up.’
The scene troubled me. Billy reduced to temper because he did not know the right clothes to wear and to bitterness when a woman laughed at him was less than the hero I cherished. He did not step down from his pedestal that night but he stood less securely atop it.
When at the end of a quarter-hour walk we took a public hovertram and he tendered our fare, he said, ‘Me and the kid,’ instead of ‘one and a half,’ and then stumbled over the street name of our destination, so that the driver had to work out that he meant Cholmondeley Street. When we sat down Billy muttered, ‘Chumley,’ to himself as if he didn’t believe the difference between the spoken word and what was written on his piece of paper.
I had hoped we would go through magical City Center but our route circled it and all my eyes gathered was a skyline of buildings like dominoes with bright window spots. I could have cried with disappointment. Billy leaned near to whisper, ‘You never been there? Me neither. I never been this far out of the towers since I was a kid.’ He was as rapt as I.
That was incredible. My lovely Billy had never seen the world he tried to juggle in his fingers. Worse came when he said, ‘You watch for the street sign. You spell it like this.’ He gave me the scrap of paper with the name in clumsy capitals. ‘My eye’s not so good lately,’ He was nervous, making mistakes and not correcting them.
I asked, irritably because I resented imperfection in him, why he didn’t get glasses and he smiled the sad version of his smile that always melted my tempers and asked, did I know what they cost? I did not, and felt ungenerous, but I wondered what he did with all his stand-over money. (In fact it went to his indecently large family.)
When we got down at Cholmondeley Street we were in the sort of world I had glimpsed from Dad’s car when we drove to the hills, a world of huge houses set in gardens that would have held a dozen of our Working Sweet blocks, houses with two floors and not prefabricated like ordinary houses, houses brilliant with lights outside as well as in.
Mrs Parkes’ place was immense. I counted twelve windows across the ground floor, all alight behind blinds, and wondered what she did with so many. Instead of going to the front door we took a side path off the drive and I asked why we were going to the servants’ entrance.
‘Because this time we’re servants.’
Everything conspired that night to show that Billy was not the eternal boss man he made believe to be, and to show me that idols cannot be trusted.
3
Nola Parkes
AD 2044
That night, in my private office at home, the first impression of young charm wore off. The boy seemed now to lack personality; his talent became the only interesting thing about him. He was then a skinny nine-year-old, good-mannered and properly cared-for but suspicious and withdrawn, only timidly responsive to a kindness. It was hard to see why Swill-tough Kovacs spent affection on him except as a golden-egg layer.
Francis was obviously got up in his best clothes. A mistake: that age is more relaxed when a little scruffy and grubby. At the school he had been animated because he was showing off; here he was nervous, unsure of himself now that the performance was no longer a game.
There was a weakness in the entire transaction – Francis’ ability, or lack of it, to hold his tongue. For that I had to depend on Kovacs’ watchfulness and authority. My continued success in position and influence hangs daily on the silence of dependants whose livelihood hangs in turn on my patronage. The few who know could ruin me just as I could, with a simple dismissal, toss them down to the Swill towers. There was this also, that the collapse of my small empire would bring down greater ones with it. Commerce was a network of deceit, secret understandings and outright fraud. The State auditors knew it, but what could they do short of dismantling the last bastions of an economic system already moribund?
I trusted Kovacs because I must and because my fact-finders guaranteed him in remarkable fashion. A chameleon, they reported, an ignorant man stuffed with unexpected knowledge, a reader of encyclopedias, a trivia gatherer. On the other hand an intriguer, a tactician and, when necessary, a thug. Also a devoted family man and a dedicated lecher. In spite of, perhaps because of all this his reputation among the Swill was for dependability and strict honesty. In this the police, of all people, concurred.
What should be the physical appearance of such a man? Cesare Borgia in Swill reach-me-downs?
Not at all. Tonight he was a delight, an oddity, certainly dressed in borrowed plumes and aping swagger to demonstrate command of the interview. In the view of an old hand who knew how men and women ticked, he was out of his depth. I decided to ignore him for a while, a deflating process.
I said, ‘Good evening, Francis,’ smiling with what genuineness I could bring to the boy’s tension.
He muttered, ‘Good evening, Mrs Parkes,’ and might as well have said, I don’t like it here.
‘Are you well?’
‘I’m all right.’
‘And your mother, I trust?’ What nonsense! His tension was feeding itself to me.
He said with an edge of surliness, ‘She’s all right.’ I barely caught the quick tightening of Kovacs’ hand on the boy’s shoulder, but Francis reacted with precision. ‘I mean, she’s very well, thank you, ma’am.’
Number Two Dad says, Mind your manners!
What now? Offer a chocolate?
With inspiration, as if it were the obvious conversational gambit, I said, ‘12,598 over 73?’
He did not so much answer as begin churning, ‘172.75—’ It was the right tactic; with his attention turned on himself he relaxed, ‘—342—’
‘Stop, Francis, stop!’ He ceased obediently, smirking slyly at what he judged my inability to keep up with him. I said, ‘Never more than three decimal places unless I ask for more. You’ll flood me in numbers.’
He misunderstood. ‘I can remember them for you, ma’am.’
‘That could be useful. Are you ready to start work?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ He behaved now as if we shared a joke. So that was it: performing Francis was your equal while small boy Francis was a wary, curled-up creature.
I said, ‘Sit in the big chair,’ and both of them glanced at it. I saw the thief in Kovacs appraise it – timber frame and genuine leather, indecently opulent, very expensive.
Francis said, ‘I’d rather stand,’ and explained, ‘Like answering questions in school.’
Kovacs stepped silently away from the boy, redundant, made to feel it and sullen about it.
‘Why don’t you take the chair, Mr Kovacs? We’ll be ten or fifteen minutes.’ Dismissal. The rodent face glared for an instant before he perched on the edge of the seat. I could have bet
that he had never sat on such luxury in his life.
In a few seconds over twelve minutes we did a week’s work in separating the facts of my business from the taxable fiction. When I said, ‘That’s all, Francis,’ he showed disappointment, as though he had been only warming up, but he went to Kovacs, who put a proprietary arm around him.
A genuine feeling. Strange man. Now it was his turn. ‘Mr Kovacs, I must speak with you.’
The rat face pointed, sniffing at meaning. ‘Yes.’ It was the first word he had spoken.
I pointed to the doorway. ‘Through there, Francis, you will find books. Choose something to read for a while.’
His face lit with pleasure – good! But he looked to Kovacs for permission, granted with a flick of a nod. At the door he said, ‘I like old books about when they had adventures.’
Adventures! Gone with the ravaged forests and culled beasts. We had survival, action and danger on the stock market, but no adventures. Romance was gone away. My mind reeled back to walks in rain forests now chopped to chipboard, to swimming in bays whose blue water had turned grey and foul, to being young in a world of wonders with no prescience of it being torn down around you . . . preserved in old novels.
Kovacs asked, ‘What do you want, ma’am?’
Yesterday, I should have said. ‘I need to be sure of the boy’s silence. And yours.’
It was no more than a feeler, a hope that he might have something to offer, but his offended, upward glance said I had disappointed him with a foolishness. ‘There’s no way to be sure of that, ma’am. We all take the same chance on a greasy footpath.’
I said, ‘I suppose that’s true,’ knowing myself clumsy. No one can guarantee another’s silence; psychodrugs can lift any knowledge out of any head. It was a daily risk grown familiar but not therefore discounted, a skeleton at every feast, recalling mortality.
Kovacs stood and the movement carried his message that we spoke as equals; for a second I saw what enemies might fear in him. He was not a big man but he projected an animal forcefulness; better fed, better housed, better treated in a better world, he might have been a power as humans go. As it was he had the physique of a ferret and, they had told me, a mind to match.
The Sea and Summer Page 8
