Strange Music (32 page)

‘There's a big pond already waiting!'

‘Yes, but it already has a big fish swimming around in it by the name of Grace Wyndham Goldie.'

Alex held his fire.

‘I'll just have to think about it. There's a kind of paradox in it. I could never have started with nothing and created Manutius as it is today. Fogel is an absolute genius to have done that. But those same qualities make it impossible for him to grow the firm beyond where it is now – to give it the power of its full potential. But I think I can. I
know
I can – and I think I could do it by stealth, behind his back, against his wishes.
Fait accompli!
But do I have the moral right? Is there even such a thing as “moral right” in business? Or is it all a matter of cold logic and commercial imperatives? If so, perhaps it's my
duty
to take the initiative from him and destroy his nice little outfit in order to give him something bigger, better, ten times more valuable—'

‘. . . which he doesn't want!'

‘. . . which he'd hate.'

‘Oh, by the way, Anderson was very pleased with whatever it was you told him about the Ben Gurion meeting.'

She grinned. ‘Which you have studiously avoided asking about!'

‘Well . . . I can't claim to be
completely
uninterested,' he admitted.

‘I'll tell you, anyway, but I'm surprised Anderson is pleased. It was quite clear to me that all those big, universal, global sort of issues he put to me at the Lansdowne are of almost no interest to the present Israeli government. The whole state is so riddled with factions and infighting and jockeying for advantage that no one can raise his sights to look beyond the next vote in the Knesset . . . the next election . . . all the most immediate things. Felix told me they had a joke in Mauthausen that if you locked two Jews in a cell they'd immediately form three escape committees who wouldn't talk to each other. It's like that.'

‘But of course Anderson is delighted. Our embassy would never be quite so positive in their assessment. They'd hedge it with “on the one hand” . . . “on the other” . . . What about the book?'

‘The book's fine. It'll be a straightforward justification of the establishment and expansion of the homeland . . . a hymn of praise to past heroes . . . a warning about departing from
BG
's secularist ideal, and de-dah-de-dah-de-dah. We never really expected anything else. But we'll sell several hundred thousand copies and our upfront costs are already covered . . . so everyone's ecstatic.'

Friday, 29 February 1952

Marianne found Chris, still in his pyjamas, collecting their milk from the shelf in the back hall. ‘Not dressed yet?' she asked. ‘You're supposed to start painting at Enfield today.' She checked her watch. ‘I can wait ten minutes if you want a lift.'

‘It's Julie's birthday,' he said. ‘It's only her fifth so I thought we ought to make something of it.'

‘She's a . . . whatsit? Leap-year girl! I didn't know that – you should have said. Are you having a party?'

‘Probably. I don't know. Anyway, I can't paint in this mood.'

‘What mood?' Marianne asked wearily.

‘This announcement of Churchill's.'

She frowned.

‘About the atomic bomb. Britain's only gone and made one.'

Her frown deepened. ‘But . . . Japan . . . Hiroshima—'

‘They were American. This one that Churchill's on about is independent. Exclusive or whatever you want to call it. The
RAF
doesn't need to ask anyone . . .
NATO
, or . . . anyone else. Just . . . you know . . .
bang
!'

‘And so?' She checked her watch again; she was going to hit the rush hour. And the baby always kicked when she got het up.

‘Well, it'll just take one lunatic and we're done for. It's awful, just thinking about it.'

‘Thinking? Thinking's not going to change anything. And you can't
do
anything about it either, so—'

‘We can vote for a return of the Labour government.'

‘Hah!' She raised her hands in despair. ‘Churchill's only been back in since last October. D'you imagine they've made this bomb from scratch since then? Look, I've got to go.' Over her shoulder as she left she called: ‘This is not a good start, Chris!'

Morosely he padded back upstairs, where the first thing Julie said was, ‘She's right. You've got a contract. You can't let the Tory government put you off your stride.'

‘I can't help it, bonny lass.' He found enough space on the kitchen counter to put down the milk bottle and then he folded her in his arms. ‘I keep thinking that somewhere out there along the A4 there's a . . . a
thing
of metal, a bomb, smaller than our car, and it could completely obliterate half of London. You remember the pictures – what it did in Japan – and now we've gone and made one for ourselves.'

‘But, as Marianne just said, there's precious little you or I can—'

‘No-no-no – there must be something. I want kids, don't you?' He checked his flow and added, ‘One day. How could we bring kids into a world where every bleeding country's got its own stock of atomic bombs? Because now we've got one, everyone will want their own.'

‘I don't want kids,' she said.

‘No. Of course. Not yet.'

‘Not ever.'

‘I'll take them if you like,' Eric said as Isabella started a hunt for her boots. ‘D'you want any fags?'

‘Capstan Full Strength?' she replied. ‘No, thanks. If they've any Gaulloises . . .'

‘I'll see. You can come with us if you like, Calley – just for the walk.'

It was quite a little platoon that was now daily ferried to and from the school across the fields – Sam and Hannah Prentice, Jasmine Findlater, Tommy Marshall, and Siri Johnson. Strictly speaking Siri, who would not be four until July, ought not to have been included, but she had been allowed into school when it became clear that she could not only read quite fluently and write, after a fashion, and was bored to the point of mischief at home; the actual turning point had come when, determined to progress from pencil to ink, she had spilled a whole bottle of Waterman's permanent blue over the magnificent pine table Willard and Marianne had made so lovingly during that first spring at the Dower House, five years ago.

In all, there were now twenty children under the age of nine in the community, ranging in age from Sam, who was nine, down to Karl Lanyon, just fifty-seven days old; and Nicole was expecting again in July, followed by Marianne sometime in September – if, as she often said, ‘she doesn't kick her own way out before that.' In half-a-dozen years, if they kept it up at this rate, they could start a school of their own.

A fine drizzle was falling – or, rather, wafting uncertainly all around them – as they set off from the assembly point in the back hall.

‘Can't we go by car?' Siri asked.

‘No!' Sam and Tommy shouted together as they jumped into a puddle to prove their point.

‘If you get any mud over yourselves or anyone else,' Eric warned them, ‘I'll pull your arms off and beat you both round the head with the soggy ends.'

‘Then we'd have blood on us, too,' Tommy said.

‘It wouldn't show much on you,' Sam pointed out.

‘I don't think the odd smear of blood would be your biggest worry, though,' Eric said. ‘Deep breaths now, everybody! In through the nose, out through the mouth. Every deep breath is worth a guinea in the Bank of Health!'

And off they set.

‘The first child to spot a double-breasted backchat can have my entire sweet ration for the month,' Eric announced.

‘How can we tell a double . . . whatsit?' Sam asked.

‘A double-breasted backchat. Well, it has a reddish-brown double-breasted jacket – and you can easily tell the cock from the hen because it buttons up on different sides. And whatever you say to it, it says something cheeky back at you.'

‘Do-o-o-uh!' they moaned as the prospect of a month's sweet ration receded.

‘Tell us a story,' Jasmine begged.

‘I just did.'

‘No! A
proper
story!'

‘Oh . . . very well.' Eric began: ‘It was a dark and stormy night—'

‘Noooo!' they all shouted.

‘OK,' he said. ‘This is how to catch a pink elephant—'

‘Nooooooooo!' they cried.

‘OK. Did I ever warn you against the Old Woman of Gideon's Coppice?'

‘No,' they lied. ‘Tell us that one.'

The hazy drifts of drizzle let up as they passed Rosy Primrose on their way to the coppice, but every branch dripped a line of rain and the grass and clay squelched underfoot and popped and crackled behind them.

‘It's a very serious story, not just for amusement, you know. It's a dark and dismal warning not to go down these paths alone, or the Old Woman of Gideon's Coppice will get you. I know, because I have met her and, more importantly, I have lived to tell the tale. You may not be so lucky but the way of it was this. I came down here one evening, just before sunset it was, after one of those strange summer days when the sky is blue and the sun beats down but a thin, cold mist slithers across the fields and distant objects seem to quiver and shrink even as you stare at them. But I didn't have a lot of time to notice things like that because I came down here, on this very path – Siri, don't wander that way; even dead stinging nettles can still sting, you know. Anyway, I came down here to check on Bob Ambrose's traps, to see if he'd caught any rabbits, and—'

‘What d'you do if you find them?' Calley asked.

‘I deal with them. But sometimes the snares catch badgers or foxes and then I throw my jacket over them and undo the trap and let them go.'

‘Why d'you throw your jacket over them?'

‘It's a good thing you asked that, Tommy, because – listen all of you – if you see any wild animal caught in a trap, or even a dog, even your own dog who loves you, they may be in such pain that they'll just bite anything that comes near them. But if you throw a jacket over them and hold it there you can then open the trap and let them go. But it's best even so to go and get a grown-up. Look, that ditch is rather full so I think we'll go up to the log by the pond. OK, Tommy – you're a great example, I must say. So now you can just stand there and wait for us to come round. What were we doing?'

‘You were telling us a story.'

‘Was I? I don't remember.'

‘You doooo! The old woman one.'

‘Oh! Surely you don't want to hear that old tale again?'

‘Yeeeees!'

‘Oh, very well. It happened just back there, where the path bends . . . see?'

Tommy jumped back over the ditch and trotted to join them. ‘It happened at the bend before that last time you told us,' he said.

‘Oh, Mister Smarty pants – who said it only happened to me once, eh? Anyway, that's where it happened this time – the time I'm telling you about
now
– OK? The slithery mist thickened until I quite lost my way and I was actually stumbling toward Dormer Green when I thought I was heading straight for home. Because, in a mist you know, one hill is very much like another hill. But there was this old woman standing there. I mean, she suddenly loomed up out of the mist. At first she was just a dark shape and I thought she was a broken-off tree trunk. A bit of a dead tree. But when I got really close – I mean, as close as this – I saw it was an old woman. Quite a good-looking old woman, not at all witchlike, but dressed in old-fashioned clothes. “You're going the wrong way, young man,” she said. Well, compared with her, I
was
a young man. “That's your way home.” And she pointed back up the hill. Siri, pet – the farmer's planted corn there. Just keep to the path, eh? So we chatted a while, the old woman and me, and she told me she had once lived at the Dower House and she remembered when the coppice was first planted. And so, of course, I knew she was just having fun with me, because to make a coppice like this you have to let the trees grow forty or fifty years and then cut them down and then let new little trees sprout up again all round the old stump. So Gideon's Coppice is well over a hundred years old and this old woman didn't look a day past seventy. So anyway, we parted company and I set off home and the mist had lifted by then so I could see the way. And I'd only gone about twenty paces when I realized I'd forgotten to thank her. Siri – yes, darling, it's a bird's nest left over from last year but the birds might just want to come back to it again next month, so let's just leave it there, shall we? Maybe Mrs Walker will let you do a drawing of it when we get to school. So – I'd forgotten to thank the old woman, so I turned round and said, “Ta muchly,” or something extremely polite like that. But instead of saying, “You're welcome,” or “Not at all,” or something extremely polite like that back to me, she raised her hand up like this and she put it on her forehead. And then she slowly . . . lowered it . . . down . . . down . . . down . . . over her entire face. And when her hand was here, she had two bright, coal-black eyes; but when it reached here –
the eyes were gone
! And when her hand was here, she had a slender, aquiline nose; but when it reached here,
the nose was gone
! And when her hand was here, she had a full red mouth; but when it reached here –
her mouth had vanished
!
Her whole face was as smooth . . . and as plain . . . and as white . . . as the side of an egg!'

The children halted and stared at him, open-mouthed; but they knew the tale well and wanted to hurry on to the climax. ‘What did you do? What did you do?'

‘This!' He ran the few remaining paces and vaulted the stile into the lane that led up to the school. ‘Except that I didn't just jump over some little fallen-down log. I jumped clear over one of the
trees
!'