Keep The Giraffe Burning (19 page)

‘Who gets the benefit, that’s all I want to know. Who …’

‘You just try telling
that
to …’

‘… the point anyway. The revolution …’

‘Listen. Just listen a minute. We …’

‘… our fucking priorities!’

‘… tricity Board. And if the troops …’

‘… Action Committee, not some bloody Fine Arts Apprec …’

‘LISTEN!’ Prouty shouted.

‘… to have a plan,’ finished Zero.

Prouty wasn’t tall, but when he stood up on the bale-of-bay sofa to address them, his US face looked down from near the ceiling. ‘Listen, I know you’re all excited, but we agreed to do this thing quietly. If you all go belting out of here like a pack of drunks, we won’t make it to the end of the street, let alone Forage Park. And – Colonel, will you shut up and listen? – and I want all those axes out of sight. Zero’s got the idea.’

Zero Young showed them how to hook the axeblade in the armhole of an overcoat. The women were to carry coils of rope and tins of paraffin in their egg-basket handbags. Mrs Fordyce stopped listening. All she could think of was this wretched little flat. How could Mr Prouty stand living here, cramped up in what they called a council ranch?

‘I’m so nervous,’ said Clara Bond. ‘What if we get caught? What if my boss finds out?’

The Colonel patted her arm.

Prouty said, ‘We’d better leave in two’s and three’s. Meet at the generating station in five minutes.’

The Stoddard boy laughed. ‘What generating station?’

For some reason – perhaps because he worked in a plastimber yard, or went around with his mouth open – the Stoddard boy had a reputation for wit. Now everyone laughed with him but Clara. She went off to find Prouty’s toilet.

He stepped down from the sofa and clapped his hands. ‘Right then, let’s go.’

‘What about Clara?’

‘She’s to stay here and phone the newspaper.’

Stoddard made some remark about paper and they set off.

‘Fertilizer,’ said Harry Sheppard.

Sue looked up from her conference story. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Fertilizer. I’ve been over every clipping for ten years back. There has to be some connection between phantom riots and fertilizer.’

‘Think I should mention the minister’s inked ankle?’

He slapped his desk and stood up. ‘You write your story and I’ll write mine.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To the pictures. I think better under sedation.’

The grazing park, once they were inside, seemed bigger and blacker than they’d imagined. Mrs Fordyce insisted they were heading in the wrong direction.

‘I don’t remember all those clumps of bushes,’ she said, pointing a finger no one could see at the darker smudges on the hillside.

‘No, we’re right.’ The Colonel went forward. In nights he could remember, the sky here would have shown the yellow glow of London,
and the objective would be a clear silhouette against it. Curious. Because of course the tower wouldn’t have been there then, not with the lights. The field and figure occupied entirely different universes, as it were. This tower: there fore, no street lamps.

The clumps of bushes, as they drew nearer, became sleeping cows. They stirred, lowing, and moved off downhill when the noise of chopping began.

Clara was unable to flush the toilet, there being no used dishwater left in Prouty’s bucket. She threw open his front window and breathed in the cleansing air. No smell, no stain. From the hill came faint echoing raps.

Prouty had left the warning and phone number next to the phone. Clara picked up the paper – a leaf from some old paperback – and rehearsed the message:

‘We, the Action Committee of Concerned Individuals to Disrupt Electrical Nuisance Towers, are calling to tell you we’ve just pulled down and burnt the generating plant in Forage Park. Let this be a warning to the Electricity Board. If they think they can put a dangerous windmill right here, where it could blow down and electrocute us and our children, let them beware. We will destroy every windmill they build! We will put a stop to these dangerous and senseless experiments. This is only the beginning.’

Norman Coutts pulled the wilted rose from his buttonhole and flung it on the table.

‘It’s all a waste of time,’ he said. ‘Gentlemen, can’t we at least agree to give the afrodollar a crawling peg? What else are we here for?’

‘Look, Norman. Think a minute.’ Happy Schine of the USA opened a folder. ‘You know it’s suicide for the escudo. And you may or may not agree that the escudo is just about the most contagious currency in the bloc.’

The man from Senegal shook his head. ‘We’re going at this from the wrong end. Why not begin with the Rio conference dollar. That’s the source of the epidemic. You all assume we’re going to keep bailing it out forever, and that’s not realistic.’

‘The Rio dollar is alive and well and living in Argentina,’ said the Saudi. ‘But look what it’s resting on – a god-damned platform of rotten schillings!’

‘I’m going to bed,’ said Coutts. ‘We’re bound to see this in a different light tomorrow.’ As he left the room, all the lights went out.

‘There’s Britain for you,’ said the Korean’s voice. ‘They want to manage everyone’s economy, while at home they have a strike every five minutes.’

‘Throughout the world, grass provides food, both grain and meat, heat, shelter, clothing, weapons and tools, drugs and herbs, and of course life-giving oxygen. We may indeed say with the poet, “All flesh is grass”.’

– Lord Spoggett, chairman, Plastics Board

The girl ahead of Biron kept getting winks and grins from the young sergeant behind the counter.

‘I’m sorry, miss, but if he’s not a relative, we can’t look for Mr Sheppard, unless we have reason to suspect a crime has been committed.’

‘Yes, but can’t you –?’

‘There’s nothing stopping you from going to Secpol, of course. I understand their rates are very reasonable.’

His face was sunburned and his straw-coloured hair damp, as though he’d just rushed in from the plough to deal out police advice. He saluted as Biron stepped up.

‘Yes sir?’

‘My name is Biron Johnson.’

Ignoring the noise from the next room, the sergeant carefully entered this on a form.

‘My parents are missing. Carl and Helen Johnson. And my sister Carolinda.’ Their names were taken down.

‘Yes sir. Now your address?’ Next door, something thumped against the wall a few times.

‘Well, we don’t exactly have an address as yet. We’d only just got to London, to look for work.’

‘I see. This does make a problem. If we locate them, how can we-get in touch –?’

‘Griffiths!’ someone shouted next door.

‘Excuse me, sir.’ The sergeant took a length of iron pipe from under the counter and went next door. Now Biron noticed that his uniform was completed with jeans and worn carpet slippers.

In a few minutes he came back, smoothing his hair. ‘The best thing,’ he panted, ‘the best thing would be for you to get yourself a fixed address. Until then, you’d best drop in to see us once a week. Friday mornings are reporting days. And – oh, where did you last see your family?’

‘In a cinema queue in the West End.’

‘All-night cinema was it?
Dossarama
? Happens all the time. I imagine they’ve just ditched you, lad.’

Biron stared up for a moment at a yellow poster: F
REE
F
OOD WITH THE
M
ETROPOLITAN
P
OLICE
.

‘Well. I’ll check back then, Friday morning.’

‘You’d better.’

‘That’s where I want to go, I want to stay,

In Tanzy,

Tanzy,

In Tanzy far away.’

–work song

‘I know it’s a local story,’ Elvis said. ‘But it’s news. I mean, the first
mugging for real money in London, in – years and years. Ten quid!’

‘The sub won’t buy it,’ said Peter. ‘How can he? The last story we printed about Secpol brought a writ.’

‘But they were only dressed like men of the Security Police Agency. That’s not libel.’

‘It is now; we can’t mention their name. You want something to do? I’ll give you something to do. Write up a little story about Harry Sheppard’s disappearance.’

‘I am, I am. Peter, I talked to Sue Stiles. She said he left the office raving about horse shit.’

That afternoon, Norman Coutts conceded that Britain might accept a gold graft scheme, provided the Hungarian loan could be buried. Jesus Figueras of Venezuela made a counterproposal: nail the Hungarian loan to the Rio dollar float, and buy off the exchange surplus with dirhan. Evan MacIntyre of Canada thought this might be more stable if run in tandem with a limited-access overdraft agreement between the USSR and Rhodesia, monitored by the UAR.

The UAR economist said he had a headache, and was going for an afternoon nap.

Father Millennium wanted them all to understand the need for a careful study of the Mysteries. Did anyone here know the Welsh were descended from space travellers? That duplicates of Stonehenge had been found on the Moon, only the authorities wouldn’t release the photos? We were, he said, being lied to by those in power.

Shading his eyes from the sun, Biron lay back in the grass and listened to the frail voice. A bird squawked somewhere, just once. He dozed, dreaming of a dark, narrow sweet. A huge shape came rushing towards him, about to crush him against the wall.

Was it a wagon? He couldn’t remember. It vanished like the taste of the ‘soup’.

Sue Stiles copied all the notes from Harry Sheppard’s desk into a list:

tooth house

phantom riot (s)

phone Briggs for council mins

fertiliser grows!!!

import statistics

farms how deliver?

whose???

check D-notice applics

cartoon: the lost chord? (crossed out)

MI510 11 9 13 13

MI64 2 – 6 1

Metpol 49 58 43 48 61

Secpol 18 21 34 56 111

seated one day at the organ …

The list made no sense. Every item was either banal or surreal. She spent an afternoon finding out that the numbers meant applications for D-notices over the past five years, then she tore up the list and forgot about it, or nearly.

Next day the tooth story broke.

The smell of eggs frying in butter drifted out the kitchen door of the farmhouse. Carolinda and her new friend hurried towards it, carrying a pail between them.

‘Don’t let any flies in,’ said the farmer’s wife. ‘Hungry, girls?’

They nodded.

‘Yes, the new prisoners always are. Be ready in a minute, dears. Cut yourselves some bread. I can’t fuss with toast, but I always like to give my girls a decent breakfast. You won’t find it hard work here, whatever they say about labour camps. We expect a full day’s work for a full day’s food, mind, but that’s all. Not like some camps I could mention. What’s up, girl? Sorry for your sins?’

‘I was just wondering about my parents,’ said Carolinda. ‘They were arrested with me. Do you think they might be on a good farm like this? And my brother Biron.’

‘They might even be here, my dear. It’s a big farm. Let’s see: you give me their names, and I’ll ask Rufus. He keeps the books. And don’t you be afraid of Rufus, neither of you. He almost never uses the whip, I’ll say that. He curses, but he’s a fair man.’

Carolinda’s new friend, Clara, asked to be excused, to go to the toilet.

By 4 a.m. there were only three men left at the conference table. Hap Schine (USA), Alonzo Tomas (Spain) and Kai Sung (China). The others had drifted off to the dormitory.