Sons and Daughters (21 page)

‘How would you like a hole in your head?’

‘Not much,’ said Paul. ‘Look, I’m only telling you I’ve never seen a belly dancer perform.’

‘Oh, really?’ said Lulu. ‘Bloody hard luck, mate.’

‘Tuppence in the swear box when we get back,’ said Paul.

‘Ha ha,’ said Lulu. ‘By the way, why doesn’t your dad contribute to the funds?’

‘My dad is dead against Socialism. He’s a confirmed capitalist.’

‘God, imagine having a capitalist father,’ said Lulu, daughter of a doughty if somewhat dogmatic Socialist MP. ‘Imagine having to live with the fact.’

‘Fortunately,’ said Paul, ‘my dad’s a good old dad, if a bit old-fashioned.’

‘Old-fashioned means standing still,’ said Lulu. ‘Wait till we get a Socialist Republic. That’ll wake him up.’

‘I don’t think you’re in a very good mood,’ said Paul.

‘No wonder,’ said Lulu. ‘Would you like to be called a belly dancer? By a crazy old has-been?’

‘Not the thing for a bloke,’ said Paul. ‘Our bellies aren’t as picturesque as yours. But I don’t see Mrs Trevalyan as a crazy old has-been.’

‘All right, so she gave us ten quid,’ said Lulu. ‘Are you going to butter her up for more?’

‘No,’ said Paul, striding down Penton Place and noting the run-down look of the terraced houses. Everything in the country needed a facelift, and Prime Minister Attlee needed millions of extra oof from the already burdened taxpayers. ‘No, I’m not.’

‘Why not?’ asked Lulu, her ankle-length dress an inconvenient handicap around her fast-moving legs. ‘Yes, why not?’

‘Because she’s a sweet old girl who’s not in favour of our aims,’ said Paul. ‘The ten quid’s enough. If I call again, it’ll just be to say hello to her.’

‘To say hello to Henrietta and her tarty dress, you mean,’ said Lulu.

‘Should we be unkind about a girl who’s just helped to swell our funds? asked Paul.

‘She was nearly on your lap, you weakling,’ said Lulu.

‘No sauce, Saunders,’ said Paul, ‘and no Socialist Republic, either. It sounds Marxist to me.’

‘True Socialism does have a Marxist flavour,’ said Lulu.

‘Don’t tell our voters that, or they’ll bring Churchill and his Conservatives back,’ said Paul.

‘I’ll plant bombs if that comes about,’ said Lulu.

‘Guy Fawkes tried that, and you know what happened to him,’ said Paul. ‘Cheer up, Lulu, we’ve enjoyed an entertaining afternoon.’

‘Leave me out,’ said Lulu. ‘And listen. You’re walking my legs off.’

‘I’m not to know that, am I?’ said Paul. ‘I can’t see ’em.’

‘Bloody hard luck again,’ said Lulu.

‘That’s another tuppence in the swear box,’ said Paul.

Lulu stopped. Outside the open front door of a house she uttered a tight little scream. At once, a woman hurried out.

‘Here, what’s that young man doing to yer, love?’ she asked.

‘Killing me,’ said Lulu.

‘Oh, gawd help us, what’s he killing you with?’

‘A phantom umbrella,’ said Lulu.

Paul laughed and resumed walking. Lulu, hitching her dress, dashed after him.

‘Come on, don’t hang about,’ he said, ‘there are still some letters to type.’

‘I’m resigning,’ said Lulu.

But she didn’t.

The foxes turned up again that night, but not with their cubs. The young ones had been driven off to find their own territory. And the fat lambs had gone. The dog fox and its vixen prowled around the high wire fence enclosing the chicken run and the roosting houses. Red tongues dripped saliva as the smell of plump hens reached their sensitive noses.

They moved close to begin digging a tunnel, their teeth primed to bite off the head of every chicken. In their movement they crossed the line of an electric eye fashioned by Matthew with the help of Jonathan, and on came the glaring floodlights. At the same time a howl like that of an Irish banshee shattered the silence. That device was the exclusive brainchild of Matthew, an electrical wizard.

The foxes fled.

The howl lasted only five seconds. But it brought Matthew and Rosie awake.

‘They’re out there, those foxes,’ said Rosie.

‘Not now,’ said Matthew. ‘Right now, I’ll wager they’re still running.’

‘Are you going down to take a look?’ asked Rosie, too cosy to want to get out of bed with him.

‘I don’t fancy showing a lack of confidence in that contraption of mine,’ said Matthew. ‘So I’m staying here, but since we’re awake, how about a cuddle?’

‘Nice of you to ask,’ murmured Rosie. ‘Yes, very nice, old boy.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ said her old boy, not noted, however, for failing sinews.

That same night, the hideous dream of the revolting Belsen concentration camp fashioned its nightmare once more for Boots. It fashioned the skeletal inmates, the naked carcases of the dead ones, and the starkly emaciated faces of the dying. It brought into being the black hollows that were the suffering eyes of starving Jews, and it pictured the ugly images of brutalizing SS guards.

At its most virulent stage, with the cold eyes of Himmler’s murderous camp officers boring into his very soul, the nightmare woke Boots. He lay there beside Polly, silently swearing at that which he knew was afflicting many American and British soldiers, disgusting dreams of all they had encountered when the Allies were overrunning the western regions of Germany.

The Nuremberg trials had resulted in the execution of Germany’s major war criminals, but had
encompassed relatively few of Himmler’s depraved SS men. And women too. Women. Could any ideology be worse than that which had turned even women into sadists?

Women.

Something was at the back of his mind, something he instinctively felt he needed to know. It might have transmitted its message if it had been capable of penetrating the cloud that fogged his head, a cloud thick with the horrendous greyness of Belsen. His mind made its effort, but failed and turned to Germany.

Germany. The country that had been ravaged by war and the forces of retribution was slowly recovering from overwhelming defeat. The Four Powers, America, Britain, France and Russia, occupied Berlin. The Russian sector, an uninspiring area, was jealously guarded by Stalin’s Communists. Last year Soviet Russia’s leader had attempted to blockade the city, prompting immediate action by America and Britain in the form of an air lift that dropped regular supplies of food to the starving Berliners. In the end, it forced dictator Stalin to lift the blockade.

The German people had paid the price for accepting a dictator of their own, a dangerous and despotic fanatic. Except for a few courageous men and women, none had lifted a finger to save the Jews.

Men and women. Ours and theirs, thought Boots. Thank God for ours, and thank Him for all those I call my own, from Chinese Lady and Edwin
Finch down to the youngest, Daniel and Patsy’s infant daughter.

For Emily who had gone.

For the twins.

And for Polly, their living and breathing mother.

He smiled at himself for his indulgence of sentiment, but it had calmed him, and he turned over and went back to sleep.

‘Hello, Jimmy!’ Jenny, passing along the edge of the tide with her friends, called her greeting.

Jimmy, in the water with his sisters, raised his voice in response.

‘Top of the morning to you!’

Jenny waved and went on with the group. Fiona turned her head.

‘Enjoy your day, Jimmy!’

‘Ta muchly,’ called Jimmy.

He heard Jenny laugh, and he heard them all singing as they went on their way to climb Brea Hill.

‘Crikey, those girls, Jimmy, they’re teasing you,’ said Phoebe.

‘I’ll work out some way of having my own back,’ said Jimmy, thinking it didn’t make for holiday rapture when a stunning girl was so wrapped up in the activities of her group that she hardly knew he was alive. Well, it amounted to that, which didn’t do a lot for his male ego.

What about carrying her off to Land’s End?
There were some wild views of the heaving Atlantic from Land’s End, and some spectacular cliff walks. No, she’d push him over the edge for abducting her.

‘Blow that,’ he said.

‘Blow what?’ said Paula, splashing close.

‘My pathetic brainbox.’

‘Dad’s got a brainbox,’ said Paula, ‘but you couldn’t call it pathetic.’

‘Mine needs a doctor,’ said Jimmy.

‘Why?’ asked Phoebe.

‘It’s falling apart,’ said Jimmy. ‘Come on, race you and Paula over a hundred-yard sprint. Give you both ten yards start. Loser’s a wally.’

‘Crikey,’ said Phoebe, when the race in the sea had been won and lost, ‘fancy Jimmy being the wally.’

‘It’s made my day,’ said Jimmy.

On top of Brea Hill a little later, a number of young people were celebrating their victorious climb. The triumph of one of the girls was clearly evident. She was waving her white straw hat.

‘You can’t see him from here, can you?’ said Fiona, a giddy blonde.

‘Can’t see who?’ said Jenny.

‘The sweetie,’ said Fiona.

Barry, a close friend to Jenny, with ambitions of becoming a lot closer, poked his nose in.

‘Who’s a sweetie?’ he asked.

‘Me, of course,’ said Fiona.

‘And who’s my Jenny waving to with her hat, I wonder?’ asked Barry.

‘My audience down below,’ said his close friend, ‘and I’m not your Jenny.’

‘I’m giving it time,’ said Barry, working at the task of acquiring a winning personality.

They stood there, all of them, bronzed by the sun, surveying the expansive, colourful view with the clear unclouded eyes of young gods and goddesses poised on the highest slope of Olympus.

The place in the inner haunts of Soho was smoky and fuggy, of course. It deigned to call itself the Smokers Club, and had a licence for booze. It was fairly full this evening with members and their friends. Most members looked like shifty geezers, and most of their friends looked like furtive hangers-on. All seemed to prefer fug to the twinkling lights of the West End, where the post-war resuscitation of cinema, theatre and pub life was encouraging the nightly arrival of swarming revellers. The Windmill Theatre, famous for never having closed all through the war, was staging its revues of scantily clad or totally unclad girls and stand-up comedians. The stand-up comedians had a hard time. ‘Get off, Charlie! Bring on the crumpet!’

In the Smokers Club, the Fat Man was sitting at a corner table, and making the table top look about the size of a saucer. In case anyone thought of lifting his wallet, or thumping him with a sandbag to get the shirt off his back, so to speak, he had Large Lump sitting with him. And outside were Rollo and the two other bodyguards. An
honest man couldn’t be too careful in this part of Soho. Nor could the Fat Man.

‘He’s here, y’know, guv,’ whispered Large Lump, whose slightly punctured backside was feeling better.

‘I do know,’ gurgled Fat Man.

‘Well, ain’t yer going over to talk to him?’

‘No, I bloody well ain’t. I’m the mountain, and the mountain don’t go to Mahomet.’

‘That ain’t his business name, guv. He’s the Parson.’

‘Don’t keep telling me what I already know,’ said Fat Man. ‘Drink your cocoa.’

Large Lump swallowed a couple of mouthfuls of dark beer. Fat Man sipped a Scotch, his eyes, peering through podgy framework, fixed on a man in the opposite corner, a thin man, with a black bowler tipped on the back of his black-haired head, and eyes like black diamonds. He had a slim cigar between his lips, and was playing dominoes with a bulky geezer as hairy as a gorilla. It looked a lot, all that fur, but was sometimes useful in camouflaging a guilty look. On the other hand, it was inconveniently in the way whenever he was trying to let innocence shine through.

The thin man ignored the glances from across the way. He chewed on his cigar, let the smoke curl upwards to join what was already hanging close to the yellowed ceiling, and concentrated on his dominoes.

‘He ain’t in no partic’lar hurry,’ growled Large Lump.

‘Nor am I,’ said Fat Man, his overburdened chair creaking a bit. ‘That is, as far as he’s concerned.’

‘Still, I’m starting to feel sorry I recommended him,’ said Large Lump. ‘It ain’t too polite, taking no notice of you.’

‘Don’t fidget, drink your cocoa,’ said Fat Man, afflicted by oncoming perspiration in the stuffy heat of the place. Its atmosphere was one of dubious deals being done. No-one was sitting with a straight back. Heads and shoulders were bent, and the smoke of black market cigarettes formed drifting clouds around them. A shifty geezer suddenly became argumentative with a furtive hanger-on, and clouted him. At once, the bouncer appeared, a Hercules. He didn’t stop the fight. He waited until they were both at each other’s throats on the floor, and blood was visible. He then dragged them up, and carried them out, one under each arm. No-one present took a great deal of notice. There was too much going on in the way of whispered business.

The dominoes game ended. The thin man got up and crossed the floor. He sat down at the Fat Man’s table.

‘You’re Mr Ford?’ he said. He spoke without, apparently, moving his lips. It kept what was left of the cigar in place.

‘Right.’

‘I’m the Parson.’

‘So I believe.’ Fat Man studied his prospective helper. ‘You officiate at funerals.’

‘Indirectly.’

‘I’m not looking for a funeral.’

‘You’ll get one eventually. We all will.’

‘I’m not looking for my funeral, or anyone else’s,’ said Fat Man. ‘Just an injurious job on a certain party.’

‘Ah.’ The Parson’s coal-black eyes glinted. ‘How injurious?’

‘Crippling.’

‘That’s pretty injurious.’

‘You can do it?’ said Fat Man.

‘It’ll be a come-down.’ The words were still arriving without any real movement of the lips. ‘Usually I do fatally injurious.’

‘Forget that. It ain’t my line. I want a hospital case, not a mortuary stiff.’

‘I get you. Hospital case. Artificial leg, say?’

‘That I like the sound of,’ said Fat Man.

‘Me too,’ said Large Lump.

‘Running the certain party down with a car could do it,’ said the Parson. ‘But you can’t always guarantee the right result. Your certain party might end up a funeral case, after all.’