He padded into the outer office. The new carpets, from last year's refurbishment, muffled his footsteps. She was at his door.
Mary Reakes was not aware of him. She had, damn it; a colour chart in her hand. He could see it over her shoulder, the chart a client used to choose a decoration scheme. It showed squares of pastel shades, and he thought she'd probably end up daubing the cubicle in bloody magnolia.
'In a hurry, are we?' He tried the old acid but had never been good at it.
She didn't have the decency, he reckoned, to spin round and blush. It was as if he was sick with a plague, and the funeral people were round his bed, measuring him up.
'It's only six bloody days, can't you wait that long?'
She didn't do embarrassment. 'Thought you'd gone home, Dickie.'
'Well, I can tell you I'll be here to the last minute, last hour, last day of my employment. Then the reins will be passed and you can have your painters in, but not a minute before.'
An obsession with history dominated the life of Steve Vickers, and what delighted him most was the opportunity of sharing it with others–not a history of kings and queens, not the great cultural, political and social earthquakes of the United Kingdom's past:. history for him was the development of the town, Luton, that was his home.
'I am asking you, ladies, to look up and study the clock in the tower. Are you all with me?'
Disappointingly, only a dozen or so were, but if there' had been only three souls, he would have persisted with the tour.
'The tower above our town hail–yes, it dominates the main square, St George's Square–was built in 1935 and 1936, and opened by the Duke of Kent. I'll come to the clock in a moment but, excitingly, the building has a story of its own…'
He beamed around him. It was necessary, Steve Vickers believed, to share his enthusiasm if he was to hold an audience. The weather was cool, darkness settled over the building's roofs, but the rain had held off. Only two of his original party had slipped away. Not bad…A not ungenerous disability pension from Vauxhall cars' Research and Development Unit, after he had been invalided out with persistent migraine attacks, allowed him to devote his life to the town's historic past. Now he had with him a Women's Institute group from a dozen miles away, shivering but standing their ground.
'They had to put up a new town hail because the previous one was burned down by an angry mob. Yes, believe me, in this town a mob was sufficiently enraged to storm a police line–just where we're standing now–break down the main door and set fire to the building. Order was not restored until regular troops were brought in from Bedford…and that happened in 1919 and it was called the Peace Riot. Former soldiers, then demobbed, couldn't get work and the celebration of the armistice caused their fury. That day was probably the last on which significant violence hit the town–and long may the quiet last.'
He had heard, at his reference to the Peace Riot, a faint titter of amusement, sufficient to sustain him. The following Wednesday he was booked to escort a group from the Townswomen's Guild around Hightown, on the other side of the river, where the hat-making industry had been the country's largest a century ago. On the Saturday after that he would be back, early in the morning, with sixth-form students and any others who cared to attend, in St George's Square. Communicating raw history was a joy to him.
*
Through the car's passenger window, she saw a man bob his head as money was passed from purses.
Faria recognized him. With his old coat, the wool hat down on his forehead and the sheaf of papers in his fist, she had seen him often enough with his little tour groups. For a moment she thought it sad that so few accompanied him–but it was only a fleeting thought because the business in hand was shopping and on her knee was the list she had been given of items to be bought. A police car pulled out behind the car and passed them, and the policewoman, who was the passenger, eyed her. She said quietly to Jamal, 'Don't worry, they're not for us. They're for druggies and drunks. The town is bad with all levels of abuse. It's the corruption…There are no guns here. The town is not protected.' A little shiver went through her but she thought Jamal hadn't seen it. She had neatly ticked off each item on the list, and now she needed only the hardware store, which never closed before ten, to buy the soldering iron. They followed the police car, and the road took them away from the guide and his party past the steps to the shopping arcade. She knew it was the target but not when it would be hit.
Without thinking–she had dedication but not professionalism–she broke a rule. She turned to the young man beside her who was so young and had smooth skin, not her scars. She asked, 'When it's done, what will you do?'
'Go home as soon as I am released to my father's shop in Dudley. After the end of the holiday, I will go to London and my college, at London University I am nineteen, I am doing first-year business studies. I was identified at the mosque in Dudley because I spoke up for the three boys from Tipton, which is close to where I live, who were barbarically imprisoned by the Americans at the concentration camp of Guantanamo, and tortured. The government did nothing to help them. The government is the lackey of the Americans. I tell you, Faria, I am disappointed I was not chosen. I would have done it, worn the belt or the waistcoat. They told me I was more valuable alive, but that is confusing to me. How can doing reconnaissance be more important than dying as a martyr? But I am obedient. I will go to London and hope that I have proved my value and will be called again…Is this the shop?'
'I apologize for asking the question. Please, forgive me. This one, yes.'
He braked and pulled the car close to the kerb.
She went with her list towards the shop's open door. Behind her, in the car, she left the youth with the pretty face, the small stunted body, the heavy spectacles and the first fluff of a moustache: she wondered if the girls at the college, white-skinned or Asian failed to notice him, if the story of the virgins in the gardens of Paradise stirred him. She could not kill it–a small, fast excitement ran in her at the thought of virgins. In the shop, Faria asked for a soldering iron and knew to what purpose it would be put.
The table had barely been cleared. Kathy had gone, charging up the stairs to her room, homework and music. The mats were still on the table, and the water glasses, but the silence of the meal was over. The envelopes were dumped in front of Jools, where the crumbs from the pudding had not been wiped away.
He stared at them. Babs had thrown them down, then retreated to the sink and was running water into the bowl.
Some of the envelopes were three months old, some had come that week. One must have come today. Babs had taken his plate off the mat, gone to the drawer where brown envelopes festered and flipped them so that the oldest were at the top.
Bills, final demands and threats.
The household finances of Jools Wright were a disaster. Bank accounts overdrawn, credit cards leaking interest charges, gas, electricity and water all unpaid. There was an abuse-laden handwritten note from the man who had repaired the chimney flashing.
No point going to the drawer where the envelopes accumulated and getting out the cheque book, his or hers, because any cheque he wrote would bounce high. Even the damned piggy bank, only for two-pound coins and the summer holiday, was empty because it had been rifled for last week's supermarket run: he had counted out a pocketful of coins while the woman had stared bleakly at him and the queue building behind him had fidgeted in irritation.
The house was the trouble. Her parents had put down the deposit for them, and the mortgage had been based on Babs going back to work when Kathy started school. But Babs didn't work any more, citing stress. The mortgage ate what he earned. He was blamed for her stress. Couldn't argue with it. Didn't argue with it. He'd not made head of department, wasn't on a high-achiever bonus, and above-inflation salary increments were a thing of the past. He looked down at the bills, shuffled and restacked them, then laid them out across the table.
'Well, I don't know what to bloody do with them, short of robbing a
bank.'
'Which you'd probably cock up,' came the whiplash from behind him.
'In fact, where I am, I'm hearing of some very professional people and they screwed up clearing out a jewellery shop. They had guns and I don't–so robbing a bank isn't exactly a starter. And since we never have a sane, civilized conversation–'
'That would be a start. I'm stuck here. I've that drawer shouting at me each time I pass it. I daren't open it. I suppose you want me to go to Mum and Dad, tell them how useless you are and beg on my bended knee for them to go and draw what we owe from their building society. Well, I won't. Will not.'
'I'm a bit short, my love,' Jools liked irony, big doses of it, 'of ideas.'
'It's all right for you, sitting in that bloody court. Precious little or nothing to think about. I'm here when they come through the letterbox.'
'I know exactly what I'll do.'
He took the top envelope, contents printed in red, from the gas company.
He held it up in what he thought was a dramatic gesture.
He ripped it into four pieces and dropped them on to the table.
Then the electricity, then the water. He heard the squeal of shock from the sink. Then the builder's note. He went to work at his task with intense enthusiasm, as if it was sex with Hannah and the squeals hers. Then the credit-card notices of- accrued interest. Then the bank's letters that referred him to amounts outstanding and the likely punitive outcome of that situation. The torn pages flaked on to the table.
Drama complete. Curtain down on theatricals. Methodically Jools picked up each piece of paper from the letters, statements and envelopes and clasped them in both hands. He went to the front door, opened it awkwardly, because he had no intention of leaving a paper trail behind him, and strode down the few feet of the front path.
At the wheelie-bin, he used his elbow to lift the lid and, into its mouth, he dropped what he thought of as junk mail, then let the lid fall back. He remembered what he had read, graffiti, on a London wall long ago: There is no problem so big or complicated that it can't be run away from.
He left Babs in the kitchen and Kathy with her music, and went to bed. His daughter was at the back of the house, deafened, his wife was in the kitchen, crying, and he would soon be asleep and past caring. End of problem. So simple.
'Go for it,' the voice murmured. 'Get it before they bring the kitchen stuff out–don't want it all covered with bloody food.'
The door of a darkened car opened quietly. Soft shoes scurried forward. A shadow skirted the light pool from a street-lamp. A wheelie-bin's lid was lifted and a hand groped down. Paper rustled as it was snatched up. The lid was eased back into place. A car door was opened and torn sheets of printed paper and pieces of brown envelope were dropped into a plastic bag. A vehicle drove out of the street. A pencil torch shone into the bag.
'Benny'll be well chuffed with this lot. Looks like we got his Crown Jewels.'
Christmas Day, 1936
Well, most certainly different from last year. Dad's not carved the goose and Mum's not dished up the spuds, but we're doing what we can.
It's not much.
No misunderstandings. I am not complaining. My decision to come here, and the same goes for Ralph and Daniel, but it is different. We are allowed no celebration. The political officer–he's Russian–says that Christmas is a festival for Fascists and that it has no place in our lives. He's a hard man (hard enough last week to shoot a deserter, an Italian, who had been brought back to our company: made him kneel and shot him with a revolver in the back of the neck, then went for his lunch–that hard) and we would not want to anger him. But Ralph said we had to do something. He tore down some ivy off a tree and wove the leaves into a bit of a decoration, and that was our tree. Daniel–he is wonderful on the scrounge–found three apples, and we ended up giving them to each other, but Ralph's was rotten at the core.
We could not–because the political officer would have heard us–sing carols, but we told each other about our last Christmas at home. At Ralph's there were servants and he's promised that next Christmas, if we've won and we're home, Daniel and I will be invited. (I wouldn't accept, of course, because I'll want to be with Mum, Dad and Enid.) But talking passed the time and made us feel better.
The best thing about today was that we were not under fire. God, tomorrow (Boxing Day) we will be. The Fascists are Catholics and they've observed a ceasefire since last midnight. Our artillery has not. We've lobbed shells on to them, but they haven't replied. They will, with interest, and it'll be awful tomorrow. We've heard them, from their trenches, singing hymns, and I had a turn on sentry in the morning and through a periscope one of the Germans made I saw the priests walking in the open, with.full robes on, to their forward positions. They sang really well, which means it isn't the heathen Army of Africa opposite us right now.
Daniel–I said he was good on the scrounge–has hidden in our dug-out a half-bottle of wine. He took it a week ago from the political officer's bunker. We are going to drink it tonight, then bury the bottle. It's going to be our real Christmas treat, and the next treat–while we are drinking–will be to make a wish. We've talked about it, what we're going to wish.
I don't know whether the others will allow it, but I want to have two wishes for Christmas. First, I'm going to wish that never again will I have a big live rat run over my chest when I'm trying to sleep: they're so bold. Give them half a chance and they'll cuddle in your armpit for warmth. If they're on your face you can feel the claws on their fret, and they're fat because they live in no man's land and eat…(well, you know what they eat). Second. I'll wish we had proper uniforms. We have woolly caps, jerkins, breeches, long socks and boots that kill your feet, but that isn't sufficient to keep out the cold. (Last night, and half the week before, we all slept together, on the same palliasse, using all our blankets, and we were still cold.) Those are my wishes. Daniel says he's going to wish for a whole battalion of German girl volunteers to come into our section of the line and be alongside us. Ralph's wish is that we all come through this and stay alive and unhurt–Daniel and I aren't sure whether he's allowed that as a wish.
I've too many wishes. I'd like to know that Mum, Dad and Enid are well.
Also, I'd like to hear from the Poetry Group: did their party go as well as it did last year and did they remember me and did anyone, because of me, read some Sassoon or Owen or Rosenberg? Rosenberg's poem, 'On Receiving News of the War', was the one I recited this morning to Ralph and Daniel–it was read last April at the group–and I said it to them: 'Red fangs have torn His face./God's blood is shed./He mourns from his lone place/His children dead.' Daniel told me that if the political officer heard that he would label me a Fascist and it would be down on my knees with a cocked revolver for company. I think Ralph was near to tears. Without them, their brotherhood, I don't know that I could survive. But no retreat is possible.
To retreat is to desert. To desert is to die.
I have to stop now because Daniel is digging under the palliasse for the bottle. Hurrah!
I find many confusions confront me. I have come to help the Spanish people achieve freedom and democracy. Alongside me, in this struggle, are Poles and Italians, Germans and Russians. More British are coming and Americans will soon join us. There are no Spanish fighters near us. (Perhaps they are in other sectors, but they are not alongside the International Brigades.) The only Spaniards I see are those in the trenches beyond the wire and no man's land, with their priests, and they are trying to kill me. Too much confusion for me to understand.
Soon Christmas will be finished, and their shelling will start again. lam too tired to be afraid and Daniel's wine will ensure we sleep. I wish Christmas lasted for ever, for a whole year.
'You have a moment, Banksy? In my office? Please.'
Banks turned, gazed at the inspector's smiling face. 'Of course. Be right up.'
He waited for the footsteps' retreat, then rolled his eyes and asked the armourer, 'What's he doing still here
?'
'Been on the prowl, finding something to do. Look, he even did the ammunition dockets, checked them through. Must be a mid-life crisis…OK, sign here.'
He did, and heaved his bulletproof vest, his ballistics blanket, magazines and the Glock on to the counter. The armourer checked them and lifted them on to the racks behind. A line of men from Delta's team was behind him, but he might as well not have been there. If he had looked for signals in their faces as to why an inspector had hung around late into the evening, then asked for him, he would have failed to find them. It had been another session in the close art of ostracism, as if he was no longer a part of them. He'd done his job, made damn certain there could be no criticism of his work, but he had not been spoken to. He had sat in the back of the second escort vehicle and had read the diary while their Principal and his wife had had their Covent Garden evening. He'd thought it the most miserable bloody Christmas he'd ever heard of, and worse than anything Dickens had described. His own Christmases, since Mandy had gone, had been back at home with his mother and he'd never told her that he was at the top of the volunteers' list for working Christmas Eve and Boxing Day; but he had driven down to his mother for lunch and left when it was barely decent, enjoyed the empty roads, and had a packet of new handkerchiefs and a new shirt to show for it. He saw that the isolation clinging to him had been noted by his friend, the armourer, and there was anxiety, but no one could help him and, right now, after what had been said, he wanted no help. He would fight his own bloody wars.
He eased past the line of Delta men and no eye met his.
Banks went in search of the inspector in his office. Why–in US Marine Corps Vietnam-speak–would a Rear Echelon Mother Fucker have stayed late, then called him in? What did the REMF want of him? He knocked lightly.
'Ah, Banksy, good of you. Bit difficult this.'
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