Blame It on the Bossa Nova (24 page)

“Not sexual, Toby. I just want to hit him. That’s all.”

“D’you hear that, Alex?.... No not yet Ronnie. I would rather that Alex co-operated with us willingly, or if not willingly at least through an eliminative analytical realization that he has no other option.... Now Ronnie, if you will be so kind as to leave us.”

Forsythe hesitated for a second, wondering if he could stomach losing face by being pushed around quite so blatantly. He decided he could and with a slight grimace stormed out slamming the door.

“No two men can be alone in each other’s company for more than an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other - Wasn’t it Johnson said that, or something like it?” I said.

“You and I have much in common, Alex... Yes, I think there’s a great deal of truth in the good Doctor’s words... Poor Ronnie, very limited, and at the moment very worried, all on account of the games you and your little friends have been playing. He didn’t want to come along tonight, but I had to clear my credentials.”

“They’re as clear as mud now Toby. By the way, if you intend to keep me here tonight could I have a bit of heat or some blankets?” He ignored this. “... Just one blanket?”

“Cut the crap, Alex. You’re in the shit. Wake up. How would you like me to hang you out to dry - Official Secrets Act, Sexual Offences Act, assault and battery, GBH, armed robbery?”

“Armed robbery? “

“I could do it. It doesn’t have to be true. I could have you locked away in the dark so long that your cock would shrivel up and drop off from lack of use. I could make it so they wouldn’t even let you wank.”

“No wanking eh? That’s tough.”

“You stupid bastard. I could have the heavy boys work you over. You wouldn’t last twenty seconds... You’ve just got to do one thing, and you’ll be out of all this. That’s a promise - Right out, there’ll be no follow up. You’ll never hear another word.”

“I’m getting kind of confused by people asking me to do things.”

“Only I’m not asking you, Alex... The time has come for Bryant to be put away. You’re going to do it for us.”

“Who’s us?”

“You saw Ronnie didn’t you?”

“ For all I know he was Guy Burgess’s fag at Eton.”

“Not true. He’s straight... Stupid, but straight. He got in too far with Sandie and Bryant and Co, and we’ve got to pull him out, and pull the plug on Bryant.” By now I was beginning to feel cold and hungry and generally sorry for myself again, and in consequence I hadn’t a great deal to say, so I just listened as he went on to tell me what he wanted me to do in order to extricate myself from the plot that he had paid me to enter. After he had gone they brought me more food and another blanket, a foretaste of the good life that could be mine if I co-operated. Then they all left me alone. I was still cold and the additional blanket would only serve to mitigate that condition. I went to the window and looked across at the lights of the building site. During the day’s activity I had been told that the whole area was scheduled for re-development, hence the boarded up properties, evidence of the first icy touch of the planner’s finger. The building site was that of a new office block on the Euston Road. The pub was due for demolition; where it stood would become part of the road-widening scheme that would also incorporate the Euston underpass at the top of Tottenham Court Road. I looked down on the backyards of furniture makers, upholsterers and the like, now defunct or in the last stages of expiration, appropriately illuminated in ghostly pallor by the moon and reflecting the snow, possibly the last snow that would ever fall on them. They were unknowing relatives of the trees in Pascale’s back garden - the Old World. They were all doomed, those backyards, pubs and unproductive trees.

Day Three. The third day of captivity. Dawn again found me awake. The bottle of Ambre Solaire still froze on the mantelpiece, my very own primitive thermometer. One day it would unfreeze and swallows and sand-martens would build nests in their regular English haunts. And then it was the mixture as before. Egg and bacon, light and bitter, light and bitter. The pub itself was not well heated and all those that entered seemed to get drawn into extended conversations with persons unseen outside on the pavement; conversations that required them to lean on the door, propping it wide open, exposing all within to the icy blasts that we were told were coming direct from the North Pole. My companions coyly revealed more of their personalities to me by way of indirect references and odd comments - nothing startling. One of them indicated a group in the far corner of the bar and informed me that they were villains. He told me that they were planning some piece of master villainy that no one else took seriously. Occasionally he would shout across to them enquiring how ‘The Great Train Robbery’ was coming on. He always put the phrase in invisible quotes with heavy capitals and studied emphasis. It seemed to be a standing joke, shared by everyone in the pub. Three light and bitters later my doubts that the place had any unexpected treats in store had become certainties. My eye had tired of following the lines and joins in the lino and I had grown so accustomed to my new condition that I was no longer grateful that I wasn’t being tortured. I felt claustrophobic, I had to get out. My companions were engrossed first in an argument about the effects of the freeze on the football season and then in a speculative debate on the possibility that Buddy Holly was in fact alive and living in Acapulco above a recording studio. The current rush of Holly re-issues seemed to them too good to be overdub productions of Buddy gargling while cleaning his teeth. They appeared no longer to regard me as a prisoner. They wouldn’t miss me for five minutes, I thought.

“I’m just going for a piss.”

The day before one or the other had accompanied me to the outside bog, now the senior of the two just grunted

“Don’t leave it out in the fresh air too long, or it’ll drop off,” said the other. His words of caution contained much that was useful. The cold hit me like a shock wave as I opened the door at the back of the bar. I did need a piss however and stood shivering under the sloping corrugated iron roof looking at the name and crest of the maker of the ancient porcelain slab. Fag ends had blocked the gully grating and a golden yellow reservoir was backing up slowly towards the end. At night that froze too I guessed. Having pissed I looked around me at the yard. I was only wearing a light jacket, my thick winter coat was inside, but I figured I could make freedom and warmth before that became a problem. It was only about ten feet square, the yard, and half of that was taken up by wooden beer crates, stacked one on top of the other, full of empty half pint bottles of light and brown ale. They were ranged against a grubby brick wall which had a token display of barbed wire running along the top. It had been put up long ago and was now more symbolic than effective. With One Bound Jack Was Free. I stepped lightly up the pyramid of crates, hoisted myself up onto the top of the wall and rolled over, dropping softly into the overgrown garden of the house backing onto the pub from the next street. I had caught myself on the wire but it was only a scratch.....Here nature was on the offensive, rampant even. The paths had been re-claimed by a spread of weeds, black and frostbitten now, but in occupation. A dozen saplings, sycamore and silver birches had grown up, some higher than me, all above waist height. The line of snow undulated over shrubs and bushes now obviously out of control – A Winter Wonderland - Beyond them the back door of the house was securely manacled with a giant padlock and had evidently not been opened for a long time. The ground floor windows too were barred and shuttered. There was no refuge here for the weary traveller. Behind me I heard the sound of a door opening and closing, swiftly followed by an angry shout and the sound of a door opening and closing again. A brick wall, about four feet high, separated this garden from the next one along the street. I ran to it and lifted myself astride it. Looking back I saw my footsteps in the snow describing an arc from the wall of the pub’s yard to where I now was - stupid, silent informants - collaborators. The garden I now found myself in was overgrown too, but in its centre stood a crumbling stone sundial, evocative of an Elysian past which I found inconceivable in that place. Behind me I heard the sounds of crates full of empty beer bottles chinking in complaint as heavies trod on them. It didn’t take a Brain of Britain to work out which way I’d gone.

I leapt over another low wall into another garden. They were becoming depressing in their predictability. But this one had a shed, covered in snow, falling apart. Behind me I saw a blur as a figure jumped down off the wall of the pub. The next wall along was too high, I went to the shed and threw myself at the door. It fell open and off its rusting hinges. Inside was the litter that a small upholstery business accumulates over approximately a hundred years - rotting hides, pieces of broken furniture, jam jars full of dense, solidifying liquids. I went to the corner of the shed and crouched down trying to cover myself up with the scraps of leather and old newspaper - Portsmouth had beaten Newcastle two nil in the first division in October 1954. Looking up I could just see through the grimy window of the shed up to the skyline of the terrace of houses, a jagged dogtooth of black sooty bricks formed by the ridges and valleys of the roofs. It stood out sharply against a white sky full of snow. I wondered how many spirits had been crushed, how many dreams had died, in this awful place. Here hope ended for me.

They came upon me angry and panting for breath, their store of good humour was all used up. To cut a long story short, they kicked the shit out of me. But that doesn’t do it justice. For a start that implies they started and they finished. But at the time I didn’t know if they were ever going to finish. I had this terror that they were going to keep on going ‘til I was dead. It was automatic and systematic and I whimpered and tried vainly to cover my face and my balls, but they just kept kicking until they’d knocked me flat and they could do what they wanted, and they wanted to keep kicking, in my face and my balls. And they kept kicking until I was no longer conscious.

Toby’s benign face beamed down at me. I was back up in the room with a view, lying on the bed. He was alone with me.

“That had to happen you know, you’ve been asking for it for so long now.”

I tried to move and felt a sharp stab of pain.

“They’re good at their job,” I said. “... Naturals.”

“You only get what you pay for,” said Toby. “.... We always go for the best.”

“Yeah, they’re good alright.” I winced again as I moved without sufficient forethought.

“... They just gave me the most convincing argument I’ve had to date for co-operating with you Toby. Far better than your performance in Richmond Park... Who are you anyway?”

“This isn’t the movies, Alex. I have no intention of giving you a comprehensive denouement of my position and then letting you dive through an open window - Unless, of course, it’s ten floors up. Then I might consider it.” He handed me a small mirror, the sort women carry in handbags. I looked at my face through the one eye I was able to keep open. There was blood all round my mouth and when I managed to slowly open it I saw that there were a lot of holes where most of my teeth used to be, some of them in the kind of positions that make a difference to your smile. There was a particularly nasty cut under my left eye and bruises on the cheeks and neck. I handed it back to him.

“... You wouldn’t believe, Alex, just how easy it is to organise this sort of thing... incredibly easy.” He seemed genuinely surprised and chortled away good naturedly.

“Have you got a fag?”

He opened his cigarette case and gave me one. I tried putting it in my mouth but I was trembling so much it fell on the floor and I couldn’t reach down and pick it up. He stooped and gave it back to me, but I still couldn’t co-ordinate to get it in my mouth so he took it out of my hands and gently put it in. Then he held out a light and held the cigarette still while I dragged at it. He was considerate like that, it’s the little things that count.

“You don’t have to go on being ‘The Man in the White Suit’, you know Alex.”

“What’s that, Toby, I’m sorry I’m not with you.”

“Alex Guinness... The film..... The one everybody is out to get.”

“Oh.” I nodded in appreciation of the allusion. “... Look Toby, could you do me a favour?... Just talk simply... I’m not up to the clever stuff at the moment.” I winced again. Even speaking gave me pain.

“Alright then, Alex.” A little frosty, a little less condescending. Perhaps condescension was preferable. “.....I’ll make it as plain as I can... That little business we spoke of...... You’re going to do it - otherwise you’re dead... Understand?... Literally dead. Not breathing.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ve got you.”

“It could be worse Alex. In all honesty you’ll be doing virtually nothing, and you’ll be guaranteed no comebacks from the police, or anything..... You don’t have to know anything about me Alex, but I’ll tell you this much. I’m one hundred percent A1 at Lords.... I’ll give you a number at the Home Office. Phone it. I mean that... Phone it... What I say has official backing all the way up the line. Ronnie Forsythe doesn’t come into it. Do you understand?”

“What about Pascale?”

“............. Yes..... It was necessary to use Pascale. We needed her. We thought you’d fall for her. We never guessed how much... You’ve got no idea how much effort it takes to learn all that Marxist clap-trap so you can say it as if you mean it..... As it happens I like Pascale a lot... It’s too bad.”