by Timothy Lea
‘I’m going to put a bomb under you lot!’ he shouts.
‘Believe me, you’re not going to know what hit you!’ So saying, he jams his cigar into his cakehole, reaches behind him for the door handle, turns and — BANG!!!
For a fraction of a second I catch a glimpse of a bulging white wall with Plantagenet Rightberk walking into it and then there is an enormous explosion. The blast knocks me back into the Cuddle Chamber, and the two beds we have not tested collapse.
‘What was it?’ I shake my head as Jean joins me and we creep gingerly to the doorway.
All the windows have been blown out of the Development Centre and there is no sign of Plantagenet.
‘Oh no!’ Jean claps her hand to her mouth.
‘What is it?’
‘I must be mad.’
‘Why?’
‘Somebody did come and mend the leak in the air bed. There was a note about it.’
‘Oh no!’
In the centre of the yard, a long white beard flutters to the ground.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Do you fancy some more semolina, dear?’
‘No thanks, Mum.’
It is not a difficult decision to make. For a start off, I did not think that they still served up semolina outside schools and prisons. I expect a few lumps, but the way Mum makes it, the lump stretches from one side of the plate to the other. When you bung some jam on to it, it rolls off. Mind you, with Mum’s home-made this is not altogether surprising. I thought it was dead simple making jam. You just boiled up some fruit and sugar and poured it into jars. Mum’s effort lacks what you might call “body”. It is raspberry juice with a few pips floating in it.
Frankly, I think the raspberries she used were a bit far gone. Their fur coats were the only things keeping them together. Mrs Peters picked them for her before she went on her coach tour of the Balkans. That was all very well, but she did not hand them over till she got back — the coach breaking down in Sarajevo didn’t help a lot, either. Mum should have thrown them away but she didn’t like to, seeing as how they were a gift. It was silly, really, because Mrs Peters would never have known if they went down the karsi or down our throats.
It is while I am trying to scrape some semolina off the underside of the skin that the front door bell rings. Mum goes to answer it and I look at Dad. He looks at me and, as if drawn by magnets, our eyes converge on the waste bin. A quick nod, and we grab our plates and make a rush for it. Dad stamps on the pedal, the lid flies across the room, and I lift the top layer of tins far enough for Dad to start burying the semolina.
‘Not so fast!’
The voice makes me jump out of my skin — just like the semolina Dad is tapping into the bin. I whip round to find myself face to face with two blokes in shabby grey macs. One of the faces is faintly familiar.
‘Search that bin, Bradshaw.’
‘Sir!’
While Dad and I look on, amazed, and Mum appears behind the two blokes, one of them drops to his knees and starts chucking tins out of the waste bin.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ says Dad.
‘What were you hiding?’ says the bloke I think I recognise. ‘Have you found anything, Bradshaw?’
‘It looks like semolina, sir.’ The bloke looks around for something to wipe his hands on.
‘Semolina!?’ Mum pushed forward angrily. ‘How did that get there?’ Dad puts his empty plate back on the table and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Unfortunately, it has some semolina on it which he smears across his mush. ‘Were you throwing away my semolina?’
‘Anything else in there, Bradshaw?’ says the other man impatiently.
‘Quite a few tins, Sir.’
‘Make a note of them. And take a sample of that, -er, semolina stuff.’
‘Who are you!?’ says Dad, wiping the semolina further over his face. ‘What do you mean by barging in here? This is a private house. If you’re that hungry, the Salvation Army is just down the road.’
‘Inspector McGoolygrab,’ says the bloke, producing a card. He looks at me like I have come in on the sole of his shoe. ‘Our paths have crossed before.’
Of course! He was the bloke in charge of the fuzz that searched Beauty Manor after the spot of bother with Wanda Zonker and the Arab geezers. (See Confessions from a Health Farm for full disturbing details.)
‘Oh, Timmy. You haven’t got into any trouble, have you?’ Mum’s distress may be due to the fact that I got myself into a spot of bother when I was a simple unaffected youth. I was conned into helping move some lead off a roof — at the time I thought it was practically slum clearance.
‘No, Mum! Of course I haven’t,’ I bleat.
‘I may have to be the best judge of that,’ says McGoolygrab, menacingly. ‘Search the house, Bradshaw.’
‘You haven’t been taking beds, have you?’ says Mum.
‘That’s right,’ I say. ‘I dismantle them and smuggle them out up my trouser leg.’ Well, really! You do get a bit fed up with everybody thinking the worst of you, don’t you? Especially when it’s family.
‘If it’s about the telly,’ says Dad. ‘I’m sorry I got a bit behind with the payments. I was a touch choked about not getting the colour, you see. They never explained to me that you had to have a special set.’
I can understand Dad starting to get worried. Half the stuff in the house has been nicked from the lost property office. Mum is already slipping her mitts over the teaspoons with BR stamped on them.
‘It’s nothing to do with the TV set — though we’ll check out your licence number. Make a note of that, Bradshaw.’
‘That’s another thing,’ says Dad. ‘I don’t think they got my postal order. I never got a receipt or anything.’
‘Have you got a search warrant?’ I say. I used to watch “Z Cars” when I was a kiddy and it was very good for teaching you to speak like a villain.
McGoolygrab dives into the inside pocket of his suit and waves a piece of paper under my hooter. ‘Will this do you, smart Alec?’ he says.
‘Oh the shame of it!’ Mum buries her face in her hands and neatly side foots a pair of binoculars under the table as Bradshaw moves to comfort her.
I read aloud from the piece of paper: ‘Chief Inspector McGoolygrab. Certain items on your expense account need further clarification. Namely, the sum paid to Miss Fi Fi La —’
‘Not that one!!’ McGoolygrab dives into his pocket and produces another sheet of paper, headed “Metropolitan Police, Search Warrant”.
I nod my head limply. ‘It’s a fair cop,’ I say. ‘Which, if I may say so —’
Dad obviously decides that it is time to find a scapegoat, and rounds on me. ‘What a blooming marvellous son, you are! You attract trouble like a maggot.’
‘You mean “magnet”!’ I say. ‘Don’t you know the difference?’
‘There doesn’t need to be one where you’re concerned,’ says Dad.
‘That’s enough of that,’ says McGoolygrab. ‘On your way, Bradshaw.’
‘What is all this about?’ I say. ‘I haven’t done anything.’
‘Would you say that you had been “doing nothing” at what I believe is now called Slumbernog?’
‘Now you come to mention it,’ I say. ‘I haven’t been doing much. I think it’s probably something to do with —’
‘Don’t play games with me.’ McGoolygrab’s eyes narrow into slits. ‘What about Double-OH?’
‘You mean “OO”?’ I say. ‘Who’s Oo?’
‘It’s a book,’ says Dad. ‘Blimey. Even I knew that. Tells you who the nobs have been having it off with — on the level, that is.’
McGoolygrab looks from me to Dad and then back to me again. ‘You’re either very, very stupid or masters of your craft,’ he says slowly.
‘Thank you,’ says Dad. ‘It’s not often you get a compliment from a copper these days.’
Bradshaw comes in carrying a thick book and looking excited. ‘I think I’ve found something, Sir,’
he says.
McGoolygrab’s eyes light up and he snatches the book from his sidekick’s hands. ‘My God, yes! S dash Z. what is it? Some kind of code book?’
‘No, Sir. It’s a telephone directory. I meant inside, sir.’
‘Brains aren’t everything in this job, Bradshaw. You’d do well to remember that.’ McGoolygrab rips open the book viciously and a pile of magazines fall on the floor. Dad immediately tries to pick them up and then checks himself.
‘The whole centre of the book has been cut out, sir.’
‘I have eyes, Bradshaw.’ McGoolygrab must be a right bastard to work for. He picks up one of the books and his eyes widen. ‘Never been to Russia, eh?’
‘I never said anything about going to Russia,’ I say.
‘Exactly. That’s the point I’m trying to make. You wanted to keep it dark, didn’t you?’
‘I’ve never been to Russia!’ I say.
‘Then how did this come into your hands?’ He holds up a book entitled Dirty Big Girls from Russia.
‘It’s not mine,’ I say.
Dad looks embarrassed. ‘I found it in the street. I thought I’d better pick it up in case a kiddy came across it.’
McGoolygrab shudders. ‘It? There’s eight magazines here.’
‘Well, all of them, then.’
‘Then you decided to hide them in order to protect your own family?’ says McGoolygrab sarcastically.
‘That’s right,’ says Dad.
‘Of course, you could have destroyed them?’
‘It’s not an easy thing to do in the privacy of your own home,’ says Dad. ‘I tried flushing one down the karsi and it got stuck.’
McGoolygrab flicks through the magazine and stops short. ‘My God,’ He says. ‘Look at that! That’s one of their rocket bases in the Urals, isn’t it? I think I can make out the tip of a rocket.’
Bradshaw studies the photograph thoughtfully. ‘It’s a large photograph of a vagina, sir. What you saw is probably the clitoris.’
McGoolygrab turns the magazine round four times and then nods. ‘You could be right, I suppose. Damn Commie swine! They just don’t care, do they? Take a look at that couple.’
‘Which couple, sir? The one on the right, the one on the left, or the —’
‘It is a bit saucy, that one, isn’t it?’ says Dad, craning over McGoolygrab’s shoulder. ‘I tell you the one I like. It’s —’
‘Get off me!’ snaps the Chief Inspector. ‘The future of the nation is at stake. Bradshaw, collect all the evidence and you, Lea, come with me.’
‘Me?’ says Dad. ‘You can’t take me. I’m just an old man enjoying a little innocent filth.’
‘Not you. The boy.’
Mum bursts into tears and Dad looks relieved and claps me on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, son. We’ll stand by you. If there’s anything you want, just ask your mother when she comes to visit you.’
And that is that. I am spirited away by the bulls without as much as a how’s your father? What makes it worse is that I have no idea about what I am supposed to have done. They keep me hanging around for two hours while they sort out the semolina and all the other stuff they have taken. Then they say they are going to take me to the hospital. You can imagine how I warm to the thought of that. Especially when the police car romps past the Bolingbroke. If they are not taking me to the local saw mill, where are they taking me to?
The place we end up at does not look at all like a hospital and a lot of nasty possibilities are running through my mind. Are they going to give me the third degree? I don’t know what it is but I know it’s painful. If I had been aware they were going to shine a strong light in my face I would have brought a pair of shades.
In the vestibule, they are selling the kind of flowers you would only buy if you had to send some to a funeral so I know that it must be a posh place. We go up in the lift with a couple of guys in white coats and the plain clothes dick I am with looks embarrassed as I stare into his eyes. ‘How long can we go on meeting like this?’ I say. The copper looks the other way and I wink at one of the doctors. ‘I think it’s the real thing this time,’ I say pursing my lips. When we get out of the lift, the copper looks at me as if he wishes he had not left his black jack at home.
Although I am making free with the wisecracks it is only because I am identifying with Humphrey Bogart. If anyone starts hurting me I will be identifying with Timothy Lea. I wouldn’t mind the threat of torture if I knew anything — I’d squeal immediately.
‘In here,’ snaps the fuzz, looking at me as if he could push me through the keyhole. We have made some progress down a corridor and I am facing a door with sixty-nine on it. How nice. I open the door and enter the room. A gaunt man whose mug is vaguely familiar is sitting up in bed.
‘Ali,’ he says.
‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Ali,’ I say, thinking that he does not look much like you know who.
‘I said “Ah Lea”,’ he says pronouncing each word like it was causing him pain. ‘I wanted to have a few words with you.’
‘It’s quicker by phone,’ I say. ‘Cheaper, too, after six o’clock.’
‘Always the jokes, eh, Lea?’ The bloke leans towards me. ‘Don’t you recognise me, Lea? Even without the beard.’
‘Good heavens!’ I say. ‘Professor Nuttibarm. I thought you were —’ I break off in embarrassment.
‘Dead?’ prompts the prof.
‘Sacked, to tell the truth,’ I say. How are you? I hear that Mr Plantagenet is well and recuperating in Switzerland for tax reasons.’
‘I had a miraculous escape,’ says Nuttibarm. ‘When Rightberk punctured the inflatable bed I had just awoken to find myself pressed against the rafters.’
‘What expansion!’ I say.
Nuttibarm looks at the bulge in his bedclothes and smiles. ‘Thank you. It seems to keep the wife very happy.’
‘I was referring to the rubber bed,’ I say.
‘Oh yes,’ says Nuttibarm, his face becoming serious again. ‘Nearly a ghastly tragedy. The loss of one of this country’s greatest secrets agents might have been more than it could stand.’
‘You mean Plantagenet?!’ I say.
‘No! Me, you imbecile! At first I thought you might be responsible.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I think I’m quite responsible, but it’s amazing how many —’
‘Responsible for the expanding bed exploding!’ Nuttibarm wipes his brow. ‘That’s why I had to have you investigated. I thought someone might have blown my cover.’
‘Uum,’ I say.
‘When that Arab business came up, things looked black.’
‘More brown than black,’ I say.
‘And to think I was going to have you liquidated,’ says Nuttibarm wistfully.
‘That’s serious, isn’t it?’ I say.
‘I used to believe so,’ says the prof.
‘And then you found out that I was British to the cor blimey and changed your mind.’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Tell me, Professor,’ I say. ‘Why were you working at Slumbernog?’
Nuttibarm looks round the room suspiciously. ‘What I’m going to tell you now is absolutely confidential and vital to the continued safety and prosperity of this great country of ours. It must not go outside this room. Is that understood?’ I nod. ‘I should not be divulging this information but I feel that I owe you some explanation after what happened to your mother’s semolina.’ I nod again. ‘First of all, I am not Professor Nuttibarm.’
‘I know,’ I say. ‘You’re Ron Figgis.’
Figgis shakes his head. ‘No. I’m — let’s just say I’m OO.’
‘Who?’ I say.
‘Double OH.’
‘So that’s what McGoolygrab was talking about!’ I say. ‘It’s all becoming clear.’
OO winces and reaches for a pencil and pad from his bedside table.
‘Constable McGoolygrab had better watch his big mouth or he’ll be out of the force.’
/> ‘Constable?’ I say. ‘I thought he was a Chief Inspector.’
‘He was,’ says OO. ‘Now where was I?’
‘You were Professor Nuttibarm,’ I say. ‘Then you were Ron Figgis. After that you —’
‘Shut up!’ says OO. ‘I was referring to my narrative. Now Lea —’ he takes a deep breath ‘— you didn’t seriously believe all that guff about me being a lift boy at Selfridges, did you?’
‘I though you were a Father Christmas at Harrods,’ I say.
‘Oh yes,’ says OO. ‘Selfridges was something else, wasn’t it?’
I would never describe Selfridges as being “something else”, but there you go. It’s a question of whatever turns you on, I suppose.
‘The point, very briefly, is this. Her Majesty’s Government are extremely disturbed by the implications of the population explosion as far as our own already overcrowded islands are concerned. We are totally incapable of supporting ourselves and unless we have the good fortune to be overrun and maintained by our conqueror, the outlook is bleak. What we need is a means of slowing the birth rate down to a trickle. The population of Britain must shrink until a handful of thrifty souls can maintain a self-supporting economy independent of foreign involvement. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Absolutely,’ I say, wondering what he is on about.
‘Now. How to effect this diminution in the birth rate? That is the question. The Government could introduce compulsory sterilisation but this would inevitably lead to abuses and civil unrest. The best thing is to strike at the heart of the problem. The bed. Most babies being born today were conceived in a bed. If we can find some way, or ways, of making bed an infertile area of conception, then we will be on the way to turning the tide.”
‘Oh yeah,’ I say. A nurse has come in and she is a right little cracker. Dead pert and with an arse like a couple of kids’ footballs. Even without the black stockings I would fancy her rotten. She fluffs up the flowers and bends over to pick up something the rambling old geezer has dropped. For two pins I would —
‘Am I succeeding in holding your attention, Lea?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’ The nurse goes out and I try and turn up the wick on my interested expression.
