by John Lawton
Troy had scarcely given the matter a deal of thought. His elder brother Rod had been an MP since the Labour landslide of 1945 – the khaki vote. He had served as a junior minister at the Air Ministry towards the fag end of the government and held on to his seat in what now seemed like interminable years of opposition. The Conservative Party had won the last two elections, survived the enforced retirement of Churchill, the madness of Eden, and now seemed to be riding out the stop-go chaos of an old romantic named Macmillan. The prospect of Rod becoming Home Secretary had been dangled before him for three years. It was above and beneath contemplation. Not worth the time it took to work up a worry.
‘I’m sure if the brass find it impossible they’ll let me know.’
‘They can hardly be expected to tolerate a direct line from a chief super to the Home Secretary, now, can they? It’s like a short-circuit.’
‘“They”, as you put it, is Stan. Stan has known Rod since before the war. I hardly think he’ll feel undue access is being granted to me or undue political pressure put on him with me as the conduit.’
‘You’re playing the innocent, Freddie. You know as well as me it’s a pig’s ear of a situation. A right pickle.’
‘Then I’ll tackle the pickle when I come to it.’
Brock grinned, sniggered, and then laughed out loud. Troy was pleased. He could not have tolerated the conversation proceeding pofaced in this direction much longer. Yet to call time on a man who’d just celebrated his greatest triumph, just announced his abdication, seemed inexcusable. He was stuck with Brock until Brock called time and rolled home.
‘How are your spuds this year?’ he tacked away unsubtly.
They had this in common – all three of them, Brock, Troy and Stan: they passed their free time gardening. Troy in the ancient kitchen garden of his country house in Hertfordshire; Stan on an allotment in Acton; and Brock on a strip of reclaimed bombsite in Islington. He was forever digging out broken brick.
‘Oh, not a bad year at all. Lovely crop of King Edwards on the way. As tall as an elephant’s eye. And you?’
‘A touch of wireworm last year,’ said Troy. ‘If I beat it this year I’ll be delighted. Plants look healthy enough.’
‘Not a problem you get on a mix of brick and subsoil, but you know what to do, don’t you?’
Troy didn’t.
‘You let it grass over this winter and turf-strip it next spring. You’ll catch most of the little buggers that way. Let ’em die off in your compost heap.’
By chucking-out time – not that anyone chucked out London bobbies – they had happily compared beetroot, leeks and carrots, and discussed the virtues of Troy’s prize pig. Brock lamented the confines of Islington. Perhaps when he’d had his jaunt, found Miss Right – who knows? – he’d find somewhere you could park a pig.
Troy was sober. Brock was pissed, but no amount of Troy’s cajoling would persuade him he was not fit to drive. Troy gave up the ghost of the argument. After all, there was no law against driving drunk, as long as you drove within the law. Once you broke the law, crossed the speed limit, bumped another car, shot a zebra crossing, then the police could nick you, and your drunkenness, or otherwise, would without doubt be a factor in the beak’s sentence, but it was not unlawful per se.
‘Knock it off, old son. I’ve driven wi’ a damn sight more’n this inside o’ me. Islington’s three miles up the road. What can go wrong in three miles?’
Troy shrugged. All coppers drank and drove. They all felt the job bought them immunity. He and Brock stood on the pavement on the opposite side of the street, heard the bolts shot on the pub doors. Brock swayed slightly. Troy steadied him and steered him towards the car.
As Brock fiddled with his keys in the door, Troy said, ‘You’re quite sure?’
‘Sure I’m sure. Stirling bloody Moss, that’s me.’
‘I meant about putting in your papers.’
‘Already done it, old son.’ Brock tapped the side of his nose. ‘Slipped ’em on old Madge’s desk after she went home. Stan’ll get ’em Monday morning and that’ll be that. You’ll be in Monday, won’t you?’
‘Of course,’ said Troy.
‘Then ah’ll see yer then.’ Brock moved swiftly for a drunk: he clasped Troy in a bear hug, crushed him to the ribs and let him go. ‘Night, old son.’
Troy walked off. Stopped, turned, watched Brock climb into the driver’s seat, waved pointlessly, and walked on towards home. The blast of the bomb lifted him off his feet. He hit the pavement ten yards away. The world turned green, then black. He sank into black as into the arms of a lover. It was all so familiar. Smothering, comforting, known.
§ 9
When Troy awoke his lover was sitting at his bedside, reading. He couldn’t see the book’s title. It and its jacket were a blur. So was her face, but if he couldn’t recognise Foxx by the shape of her legs after three years . . . He watched her turn two pages before she looked up and saw that he had woken.
Anxiety written on her face. She turned in the chair. Eyes searching for a doctor. A nurse.
‘It’s all right,’ Troy said softly. ‘I can see, I can hear and I think I can think.’
She laid the book face down on the bed and took his right hand in both of hers, the meniscant bubble of tears forming in the corners of her eyes. ‘Do you know what happened?’
‘Car bomb,’ he said, just as quietly. ‘Somebody killed John Brocklehurst. I got in the way.’
The bubble burst. Tears coursing down her cheeks. Mascara staining.
‘He is dead, isn’t he?’
Foxx nodded. ‘Could have been you,’ she said at long last, her voice buried deep in her chest.
A white-coated doctor appeared behind her, whispered to her. She let go of Troy’s hand. Walked away with half a dozen glances over her shoulder.
The doctor talked and touched at the same time. Flicked on a narrow-beam torch and plucked at Troy’s eyelids with her thumb as she spoke. Troy vanished in a tunnel of blinding white light.
‘So, Mr Troy, you can hear and you can see. You know, that was quite a blow you took to the head. Tell me, do you know where you are?’
Troy didn’t.
‘Charing Cross Hospital,’ the doctor said, perching on the edge of Troy’s bed.
Again? That figured. He and Brock had been only yards from it when the car went up.
‘In fact, you almost made it here unassisted. The blast rolled you right to the doorway. All we had to do was carry you in on a stretcher.’
‘Carried in,’ Troy said. ‘But I’ll walk out?’
‘Well, you broke nothing, and that’s a minor miracle in itself. A few grazes and a lump the size of a tennis ball on your head. But that’s what concerns me.’
She held up a hand. ‘How many fingers?’
‘It’s all right,’ Troy said. ‘I’m not going to pretend. I’m seeing two of everything, perhaps three.’
‘Then we’ll be keeping you in for a while. Absolutely standard with head injuries – but I doubt it’ll be long. No bloodclots on the brain, no hairline fractures. Your pulse and blood pressure are quite normal. Now, you must be feeling tired. Comas are like that. You sleep an age and wake up exhausted.’
‘Coma,’ said Troy, rolling the word around as though trying to divine a hidden meaning. ‘How long?’
‘Two and a half days. It’s Monday morning.’
She told Troy that she would send Foxx back to him. Troy closed his eyes. She was right. He was knackered. He thought he would spare himself the pain of the overhead light. Why couldn’t they put him in a dark room? He had no idea or intention to sleep, but he did. Red flames lapped around him. His ears rang with a cacophony of bells. His eyes flashed open. An act of will. The only sure-fire way to stop a dream. To wake. The figure at his bedside was not Foxx. It was a man. Troy willed resolution. Wildeve – Jack Wildeve.
‘Good,’ Jack said. ‘I was just about to give up and let you sleep.’
‘I was asleep?’
An hour? Good God – it had felt like a second anatomised. Time’s merest measurable fragment.
‘Is there anything you can tell me?’
‘I doubt it. Brock . . . got into his car . . . tried to stop him . . . couldn’t.’
‘Why?’
‘He was drunk. Didn’t give a damn. I walked off. The car blew up. It . . . sounded like it went up with the ignition . . . can’t be sure.’
‘Sounds about right to me,’ Jack said. ‘Forensic say it was done with a length of cable running from the distributor under the car to a spark plug dangling in the neck of the tank. Very crude, but effective. As soon as Brock turned the key the petrol vapour would have exploded. The tank, the feed line and the engine would have followed in an almost instant reaction.’
Not instant enough. Troy could hear in the mind’s ear the struggle of the starter motor, then the bangs of the explosion, three at least before he had fallen to Earth.
‘I knew he was dead. As soon as I heard . . . no . . . felt the bang.’
For a second or two as he looked at Jack, Jack swam into clear focus and Troy could read his face plainly.
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Tell me the truth.’
Jack would not now meet his gaze, but to Troy he had already dissolved into Jacks. One of them drew a sharp breath and said, ‘Brock wasn’t killed outright. He suffered almost ninety per cent burns. Damn Terylene suit went up like a roman candle, melted on him. Melted him. There was nothing left of his face but his eyes. But they got him out alive. Tried to treat his burns. Pumped him full of morphine to numb the pain. He had the constitution of an ox. Kept regaining consciousness. Kept asking after you. All the pain he was in and he kept asking for you. He died last night. About three in the morning. It really couldn’t come soon enough. There never was a chance he could live with that sort of damage.’
Troy’s mind clicked on, clicked back. His brother. The end of the war. A celebration party at their father’s old house in Hampstead for Rod’s first election win. His old RAF mates turning up. Two faceless men. The angles and arches of noses and eyebrows dissolved into blobs and curves. The shiny skin of plastic surgery. The gung-ho optimism of one, the scarcely containable rage of the other. Brock would have been like that. Angry. Cursing God and Man and Fate.
§ 10
The next time Troy awoke it was with the sense that time had slipped. There was a big man, no, a fat man – this man was definitely fat – seated next to the bed leafing through the pages of the Daily Mail. He was wearing an LCC Heavy Rescue blouse, he was bald and he was humming ‘April in Paris’ softly to himself. Troy strained to read the front page of the paper and found he could not decipher the headline, let alone the date. But he saw the leather elbow patches and cuffs on the Fat Man’s outfit, like the piped edging of a leather suitcase, the visible tears of wear, of fifteen years’ digging spuds and shovelling pig muck, and time regained its keel. It wasn’t 1944 at all . . . It was whenever it was . . . ages later.
‘Been here long?’ he said.
‘Seems like an age, cock, but . . . looking at me watch . . .’ He deftly yanked a pocket watch from a breast pocket and flipped the case. ‘. . . I’d say about an hour and a bit. I’m supposed to phone young Jack when you come round again, and he’s supposed to call your guv’ner. That Onions bloke.’
‘And Foxx?’
‘Foxx?’
‘My . . . er. . .’
‘You mean yer totty?’
Troy was quite sure he didn’t. ‘I mean Miss Foxx, Shirley Foxx.’
‘Sent her back to your place to get some kip. She’s taken this badly, if you ask me. Needed to get her ’ead down. After all, I bang on the door she can be here in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’
The Fat Man passed the paper to Troy and went to the payphone in the corridor. Troy let the paper slip. Print was a maelstrom to him. It spun and it eddied and it went down a big plughole.
‘He’ll be right over,’ the Fat Man reported back.
‘Fine,’ Troy said, without feeling. ‘While he’s here would you mind going round to the house and asking Foxx if she’d come over? I’m sure she was here a while ago, but . . .’
‘But what, old cock?’
‘But I can’t remember when.’
‘She’s been here every day.’
‘And today is?’
‘Wednesday.’
He’d slept another thirty-six hours or more. He felt as though sleep were a runaway train. Give in to it for so much as a second and you woke to find the world had rolled on without you . . . station after station . . . oh Mr Porter. . .
‘Brock’s funeral?’
‘Friday, but don’t bank on being there.’
Onions looked grim. As though all the sleep Troy had had was stolen from him. He had five o’clock shadow – but for all Troy knew it was five o’clock – his blue striped suit was crumpled and the bags under his eyes were as big as pheasants’ eggs. He looked less like the Commissioner of the Met than the hard-working, both-ends-burning copper he’d been until promotion fell on him, like reward and punishment in a single hammer-blow.
‘I’d’ve been over sooner . . .’ he began.
‘Forget it,’ Troy said. ‘I’ve not been in a state to receive you. I would not have known you were here. Do we have any leads?’
Onions sighed. ‘We’ve nowt. But that’s not why I’m here.’
‘You pulled Alf Marx’s mob, though?’
‘We pulled everyone who’s ever met him, but we’ve got nowt all the same. London is shtum, or London knows nowt. And, like I said, that’s not why I’m here.’
‘You pulled Bernie Champion?’
Champion was King Alf’s long standing number two – the right arm, the heir apparent.
‘Aye, and I sucked on half a dozen eggs while I did it. Of course I pulled the bugger. He turned up with so many briefs we had to set out more chairs. And, needless to say, he’s got an alibi you could wallop with a Tiger tank. Arrogant gobshite. Blowin’ up a copper on the streets of London and defying us to do a damn thing about it. He’s just taking the piss, isn’t he?’
‘He’d hardly have done the job personally, would he?’
‘No. But, like I keep tryin’ to tell you, that’s not why I’m here.’
Onions looked around. Pulled a packet of Woodbines from his jacket pocket. ‘D’ye reckon they let you smoke in here?’
Troy smelt a rat, saw it, touched it. ‘No. I’m sure they don’t. Why not just spit it out, Stan?’
Onions looked wistfully at his fags, shoved them back and bit on the bullet. ‘Freddie. Have you thought about retiring?’
It was pretty close to the last thing Troy had expected. At the same time it was vaguely familiar as though he could hear another, unidentifiable voice asking the same question. ‘Stan . . . I’m forty . . .’
But he couldn’t remember quite how old he was. Onions looked away as Troy fumbled for the numbers, but looked back with that old steely glint in his blue eyes. ‘You’ve taken another bad blow to the head. That’s at least the third while I’ve known you. The first sent you blind.’
That had been in the summer of ’44. And it hadn’t been the first.
He’d been kicked in the head by a horse at the Battle of Cable Street before he and Onions ever met.
‘I recovered, Stan.’
‘Then you got shot in the head three years back.’
That had been 1956. He rather thought it might have been summer too. He’d ended up in this very same hospital.
‘I recovered from that too.’
‘And there must be half a dozen times you’ve had that lunatic Pole patch you up just so it doesn’t get on to your file. Things I’m not supposed to know about.’
Troy said nothing.
‘But
what the quacks are telling me now is about the cumulative effects of all those blows. You can’t see straight, can you?’
‘No. But I will.’
‘It might be weeks, months, even.’
‘Stan, are you firing me?’
Onions seemed almost to flinch as though Troy had struck him. ‘O’ course I’m not bloody firing you! I’m just trying to get you to see sense. It’d be retirement. Full pension. Mebbe even a gong. I wouldn’t dream of firing you!’
‘Fine,’ said Troy. ‘Because if you want me to retire that’s what you’ll have to do.’
Onions gave in to the need, pulled out his Woodbines once more and lit up. ‘I’m only trying to show you where your own self-interest lies,’ he said, through the first cloud of smoke. ‘How long do you think you can go on taking punishment like this?’
Troy had not thought of it as punishment. The mereness of metaphor was wide of the mark.
‘I appreciate that, Stan. I’m just not going to do it.’ Over Onions’s shoulder he caught sight of a young woman talking to a nurse. Her face was out of focus – what wasn’t out of focus? – but it had to be Foxx.
Onions followed his gaze, got out of the chair and said, ‘I’ll be back. Oh, and you’re forty-three by the way.’
As Onions passed Foxx, Troy saw them exchange words he could not hear. He saw Onions’s eyes glancing back at him as he whispered.
She approached him. He reached out a hand trying to draw her into focus, trying to resolve the shimmering mirage of Foxxes into one coherent woman, and for a second or two he saw her as she was, slender, blonde, wistful, challenging – a blue-jean vision for his blurring eyes.
‘I’ve been every day,’ she said. ‘They seem to want you to sleep. To, like, sleep it off.’ She sat on the edge of the bed. Kissed him. Smiled. He was sure she smiled.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m going to pull through.’
‘I know. I’ve been every day. I’ve talked to the doctors.’
