The Sound of Trumpets

by John Mortimer

  ‘There’s no law,’ Terry told her, ‘against Socialists running bookshops. Even in Hartscombe. Anyway, she’s got a special left-wing shelf. She’s trying to convert people.’

  ‘You want to watch out you don’t get too close to her.’

  ‘Kate! What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘There’s a whole lot of new statistics, about the people who die of passive smoking.’

  He moved his hand towards the inside of her thigh and rolled towards her. She left her position on the tomb and curled towards him. Men in their thirties, men like him, he thought, deceive their wives with girls of Kate’s age. They meet them in doubtful hotels in the lunch-hour or invent business trips in order to take them to Sweden. He had his young mistress without guilt or lies or the invention of alibis, because he was married to her. His love-making was, therefore, as sincere and successful as he intended his election campaign to be.

  Chapter Five

  ‘And what will be your priority, Mr Willock, if you win the Hartscombe seat?’

  ‘You mean, when I win the seat.’

  ‘Well, yes. I suppose Hartscombe’s always been bright blue, hasn’t it?’

  ‘And long may it stay so. Look. The fact of the matter is. At the end of the day. People! And I’m thinking particularly of old people. Senior citizens!’

  ‘Plenty of those in Hartscombe, aren’t there?’

  ‘Thank goodness, yes. And what a fine old lot they are. Men and women who’ve given service to the country, who deserve to cross Hartscombe high street with a bag of shopping and without being mugged for their old-age pensions. They deserve the privilege of going out at night!’

  ‘You ever been mugged in Hartscombe, Mr Willock?’ Kenny Iremonger was known as Worsfield’s most penetrating radio interviewer.

  ‘I won’t say I have. But let me make this perfectly clear, Kenny. It’ll come. It’s bound to come. Unless we stop sending the muggers to five-star holiday camps like Skurfield Y.O.I. What these lads need is a tough regime. Like we had in the army!’

  ‘Were you in the army, Mr Willock?’

  ‘No. But my father was. And I know what a year or two’s military discipline did for the lads of his day.’

  ‘You mean, your father never mugged anyone?’

  ‘Well, hardly. He was a Major in catering, and you don’t get much mugging among senior officers.’ Tim Willock had the good sense to laugh. ‘But I know what a structured regime that taught you obedience and respect for authority did for lads who never got that at home. That’s what it comes down to. At the end of the day.’

  ‘So you’d want to turn Skurfield Young Offenders’ Institution into a boot camp?’

  ‘Boot camp? A rather emotive phrase, don’t you think? I’d certainly like it to be a place young offenders won’t want to revisit. I think we owe that to the frightened old people of Hartscombe. At the very least. And we want to get these little yobs off the streets at night. The fact of the matter is … you and I, Kenny, can remember a period when the word “bedtime” actually meant something. And if I might just say this …’

  ‘Terribly sorry. I’ve got to cut you off there. Thank you for coming in. You’re listening to Kenny Iremonger on Radio Worsfield’s “Breakfast Egg” show. The good news is that the overturned yoghurt lorry has been removed from the Fallowfield approach road, that’s the B7015. The bad news is that extended roadworks on the motorway have caused a long tailback at junction …’

  Kenny died into silence as Paul Fogarty crossed his office and switched off the radio. In the centre of his fortified domain he felt like the commander of a garrison, surrounded and outnumbered by hostile forces who were planning an early attack.

  There was a knock at the door, and his senior prison officer, a spare, energetic man, expert in prison regulations, with a pronounced nose which moved slightly sideways during his frequent sniffs of disapproval, came into the room and strode towards the governor’s desk. ‘It’s started again, Clifford,’ Paul Fogarty told him. ‘They want to turn us into a bloody boot camp.’

  ‘Who are “they”, sir?’

  ‘The politicians, Clifford. Amateurs. Who’ve never spent a single night of their lives banged up in a cell. Unfortunately. Well, what is it now?’

  ‘Something rather disturbing, sir, has come to my notice. Concerning costume jewellery. What the lads make in metalwork, sir.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Beautiful stuff too, some of it.’ The governor had bought large quantities of the lads’ costume jewellery for the purposes of encouragement, although there was no Mrs Fogarty to sport it.

  ‘It seems, sir’ – Clifford sniffed his disapproval – ‘that one of the inmates has been using metalwork for other motives than fancy goods.’

  ‘What’re you trying to tell me, Clifford?’ A huge weariness, the lassitude of resignation, came over Paul Fogarty. He was tempted to go back to sleep, even if it meant being haunted again by dreams of the short, sharp shock.

  ‘I found this, sir. In the cell of one of the inmates doing so-called “metalwork” classes.’

  The governor picked up the object presented on the S.P.O.’s palm. ‘A key?’

  ‘That’s what it is, sir.’ Clifford sniffed in triumph. ‘A little more work and it might well be made to open the main door on D wing.’

  In the silence that followed the governor remembered the threat to his regime at Skurfield. Clifford’s discovery would not be helpful in the fight for reason and reform.

  ‘Who knows about this?’

  ‘So far only you and I, sir. And, of course, the inmate concerned. I thought it right to inform you at once.’

  ‘You did very well.’ Paul Fogarty lifted the suspicious ornament from the S.P.O.’s hand and locked it away in his safe. ‘This is just the sort of story, Clifford, which the government’s candidate is looking for. “Tax-Payers Finance Boy Criminal’s Escape.” I can hear it now, on the radio. Can’t you?’

  ‘Indeed I can, sir.’

  ‘All we’ve tried to do here could be at risk.’

  ‘We’ve got to face that possibility.’

  ‘All we’ve tried to do for these boys. I’m simply asking you not to let this incident become more widely known.’

  ‘Not to cause anxiety among the staff, sir?’ Clifford’s sniff was deliberately knowing.

  ‘Not to give a present to the Tory candidate. In the mean time, we might have a chat with the boy concerned. In D wing, you say? It isn’t …’

  ‘I’m afraid it is, sir. It seems he’s not called “Slippy” Johnson for nothing. The boy’s always been trouble.’

  ‘What do you mean? In general his conduct’s pretty good, isn’t it?’

  ‘Unhygienic. We can’t get him to wash. It seems he hates water.’ Clifford’s sniff was at its most expressive.

  ‘But we know why that is, don’t we? We know the history.’

  ‘To know is not to forgive, in my opinion, sir.’

  ‘Very well, Clifford. I’ll talk to the boy. And for the moment … no further action. Is that understood?’

  ‘If you say so, sir.’ And Clifford sniffed.

  Half an hour later a boy, short for his age, wearing a clean sweater and jeans brought in by an attentive auntie, stood in front of Paul’s desk. S.P.O. Clifford had jangled off about his business. Slippy and the governor were left entirely alone.

  Paul said, ‘You’ve got no complaints then, Johnson?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘It’s not a bad place, d’you think? As young offenders’ institutions go?’

  ‘Quite honestly, we’re lucky to be here.’

  ‘I’m glad you think so.’

  ‘ “Butlins under Lock and Key.” That’s what they calls Skurfield.’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t broadcast that description.’ Paul remembered the ‘Breakfast Egg’ show.

  ‘And the food’s more than adequate.’ Slippy seemed determined to hand out compliments.

  ‘We do our best. No one’s bullying you?’<
br />
  ‘I don’t think they’d take it on.’

  ‘Some of them are bigger than you.’

  ‘But not half so slippy.’

  ‘Prison officers fair to you?’

  ‘Fairer than me uncles.’

  ‘Then why, in the name of all that’s reasonable, did you want to escape?’

  Slippy Johnson struck the top of his head, on which his hair grew upwards, as though to compensate for the fact that he was short for his age. Having kick-started his brain in this way he came out with the only possible explanation. ‘Suppose it gets a bit dull here. All right?’

  Paul sighed. Politicians could go on about the causes of villainy, greed, supernatural evil, poverty or the denial of breast-feeding. People took to crime, he’d decided, for the same reasons they took to skiing, hang-gliding, football, hooliganism, stock-car racing or riding on Nemesis in the theme park, to colour their lives with risk. For the same reason they sent the adrenalin flooding in bank raids or entering other people’s houses by night. And yet the search for excitement ended too often in years of unendurable boredom, brought on by a broken back or a prison sentence. The governor knew about all these things, having spent almost a lifetime in prisons, longer than most long-term offenders.

  His father had been a London prison governor. Paul grew up to the sound of banging doors and clanking keys and thought everyone had to get into their homes with an elaborate system of unlocking, relocking and double-locking behind them. He was escorted in and out of doors by huge screws who smelt of thick sandwiches. He patted prowling Alsatians and watched pale men in grey clothes weed his father’s grimy patch of garden or scrub the floor in the governor’s kitchen. He knew his home was surrounded by even-more-secure accommodation, booming galleries which smelt of cabbage and shit. He knew, from the screws who befriended him, about the shed and the graves inside the walls and could remember the mornings when his father, white-faced and irritable, brought the chaplain to breakfast. They spoke in solemn voices but still had hearty appetites, having witnessed a death. He had, it seemed to him, been a prisoner all his life, in his father’s gaol or in boarding schools, and then in the institution in which he finally rose to governor’s rank. He escaped, when he could, to the company of people like Agnes Simcox, who had nothing to do with crime and punishment, or sat alone listening to great, crashing Mahler symphonies, reading poetry and sometimes, terrified by the risk he was taking, writing it.

  He looked at the file on his desk and pretended to read Slippy’s record, although he had consulted it so often that he knew it by heart. Slippy wasn’t like the usual youth offender, he was a one-off, in a class of his own, a professional. He hadn’t started sniffing glue when he was ten, gone joy-riding and nicked car radios at eleven, taken heroin a year later and relied on profitable house-breaking to finance his addiction. So far as anyone could discover, Slippy had never taken any more habit-forming stimulant than diet Coke; he had neither wounded nor raped anyone and was possibly still a virgin. He had merely, like the governor, followed in his father’s footsteps. ‘Peters’ Johnson was an expert safe-breaker, a picker of locks and inserter of well-judged charges of dynamite, and had, apart from one long period of absence during Slippy’s childhood, largely escaped conviction. His Uncle Desmond was a frequenter of fire escapes and shinner-up of drainpipes, who could visit you unnoticed by night. His Aunty Mags was a receiver of stolen property and his gran, Elsie Johnson, had a string of convictions for fraud, deception and illicit fortune-telling. Like Mozart, Slippy had achieved an infant prodigy’s talent in a family calling, and his extemporized skills with forbidding locks and keys had, no doubt, earned him high praise in the family circle. If he had been born the child of ‘Peters’ Johnson, the governor speculated, he also would have wished to shine in his father’s line of business. No doubt that would have meant he got part of his schooling in a young offenders’ institution, but that might have been a great deal more comfortable than his minor public school on the Norfolk coast, ruled over by a sadistic headmaster and a maths teacher fighting a losing battle with paedophilia. For these reasons he felt a kind of kinship with Slippy, against which he had to be constantly on his guard.

  ‘You’re not doing yourself any good by this sort of thing.’

  ‘No, sir.’ Slippy had to admit that goodness was not what he was after.

  ‘You’re a bright lad. People notice you. You stand out from the crowd in Skurfield.’

  Slippy looked modest and thought he would try not to be noticed in the future.

  ‘Of course there are complaints. About your not washing yourself regularly. Water’s nothing to be frightened of here, you know.’

  Slippy gave a shudder, as though he didn’t believe that water was safe anywhere.

  ‘Important people find you attractive’ – Paul changed the subject – ‘Did you enjoy your day release? When you weeded the roses?’

  ‘Roses were they? I don’t know much about roses.’

  ‘You were back here on time.’

  ‘Gentleman made sure I was.’

  ‘Johnson.’ The governor stood, paced the room, tried not to sound as though he were the prisoner on trial. ‘If the story about what you were making in metalwork got out, it might have very serious consequences for both of us. I’d have to report it to the prison service. The Home Secretary would be informed. You’d be put on the block and lose remission. And I …’

  ‘You might get the sack, sir?’ Slippy, from an early age, had acquired an excellent working knowledge of the penal system.

  ‘As I’ve said. It might have disastrous results. For both of us. So. No one knows about this except us two and Mr Clifford …’

  ‘I didn’t tell no one. And her in metalwork thought it was jewellery. Mind you, she doesn’t take that much notice.’

  ‘So. I’m prepared to overlook it this once. It’s my job to come to a decision.’

  ‘And you do your job so well, sir. The lads all comment on it.’

  That was very gratifying, but Paul sat behind his desk now, with a severe and judicial frown, to pass no particular sentence. ‘Will you give me your word you won’t try anything like this again?’

  ‘By my baby’s head. I swear it.’

  Paul looked at the undersized youth. ‘You haven’t got a baby?’

  ‘Not as yet. But by its head when I get one.’

  ‘Don’t let’s bother about the baby you haven’t got. There are to be no more of these silly attempts. Mr Clifford will have you under special observation. And I shall withdraw you from metalwork and put you down for business studies.’

  ‘Business studies? Won’t that be a bit, like, dull, sir?’

  ‘Extremely. Dullness is the price we both have to pay for security.’ The governor pressed a bell on his desk. ‘I’ll have you taken back to your cell.’

  Chapter Six

  Agnes said, ‘I used to knock things.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Oh, anything that people went on about. Paris. Ballet-dancing. Sunsets.’

  ‘You used to knock sunsets?’

  ‘Only when people went on about them.’

  ‘Do you still do it?’

  ‘Sometimes. One thing I don’t knock.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I suppose … what you’re standing for. You being brave and telling them. Does that sound ridiculous?’

  ‘Not at all.’ He had no hesitation in reassuring her. ‘It doesn’t sound ridiculous at all.’

  Of course he was pleased, as he had been when he stood in the high street and saw his face in the shop window, the sincere and meaningful look, the smile of humane understanding, the gaze into the distance of a man about to lead the way into paradise. He went in to thank her and she said the window had gone down, on the whole, very well; even those blue rinses who called in for Delia’s recipes or the latest Sandra Tantamount had admitted he looked handsome. ‘It’s not a beauty contest,’ he had told her, and she said, ‘No. But that litt
le squirt Tim Willock. Ugh!’ Then he said he wanted to go out and woo the countryside vote and wondered if there was any countryside left in the constituency. It was then that she offered to close the bookshop for half a day and show him.

  The arrangement hadn’t been achieved without a degree of deception. Terry was now established as the candidate, with an office in Penry’s gaunt house in Queen Alexandra Road, Hartscombe. He and Kate moved into Penry’s top floor, once occupied by the Penry children, one of whom was now in banking and the other a drop-out in Somerset. Penry the agent, with a wife who spent as little time as possible at home, now had his loneliness interrupted, not only by Terry and Kate, but by a large number of volunteers, students, unemployed arts graduates and enthusiastic middle-aged women who stuffed envelopes, sent out election addresses and formed platoons to spearhead attacks when Terry invaded the streets to knock on doors and surprise voters with sudden demands for their political opinions. A new figure had also arrived in Terry’s life, an even more expert dampener of spirits than the agent Penry, whose acceptance of defeat was now lightened by the hum of activity and an almost cheerful determination to go down fighting.

  There was nothing cheerful about Desmond Nabbs M.P., the Labour member for the neighbouring constituency, which took in most of Fallowfield Country Town. ‘They won’t send any of the big boys to help you out,’ he told Terry. ‘None of the Shadow Cabinet will come. They don’t want to have their names associated with a Labour defeat. So you’ll have to rely on me. Des Nabbs, a humble back-bencher. At least I can see you stick to the Party line and don’t make a bloody fool of yourself. I’ll be with you knocking on doors, and I’ll sit in on your radio interviews. Before you open your big mouth always remember, Des will be hearing this.’ He was a tall, skinny man with the monotonous, droning voice of an early Puritan. He had a long, disapproving nose and eyes so deeply shadowed that he looked exhausted. He neither smoked nor drank, his only indulgence being curiously strong mints which he sucked for a while and then cracked audibly between strong jaws. He treated Terry as though he hadn’t yet completed his education. ‘This isn’t bloody student politics now,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a Party line, and I’m here to see you stick to it.’