Vintage Stuff (31 page)

'If you'll just sign this,' said the Special Branch man and placed a document on his desk.

The Headmaster read it through with increasing alarm. 'The Official Secrets Act? You want me
to sign '

'Just a simple precaution, sir. Nothing more. Of course if you'd prefer to face criminal
proceedings in connection with certain offences again the person committed in Belfast...'

'Belfast? I've never been anywhere near Belfast,' said the Headmaster, beginning to think he'd
shortly be joining Slymne in a padded cell. 'You come here and tell me to sign the Official
Secrets Act or be charged...Dear God, where's that pen?' He scrawled his signature at the bottom
of the form.

'And now the key to the School Armoury, if you don't mind.'

The Headmaster handed it over and while one of the men took it out to the officer in charge of
the squad the other settled himself in a chair. 'I think I must warn you that should anyone make
enquiries about Mr Glodstone or a certain ex-pupil it will be in your interest not to say
anything,' he said. 'The Belfast charges are still outstanding and having signed the Official
Secrets Act the consequences could be slightly unfortunate. Need I say more?'

'No,' said the Headmaster indistinctly, 'but what am I going to tell Mr Clyde-Browne?'

'Who, sir?'

'Christ,' said the Headmaster. Outside the soldiers had begun to load the lorry with all the
weapons from the Armoury. That was a relief anyway. He'd never liked the bloody things.

'And now if you'll just take me up to Glodstone's rooms.' They crossed the quad and climbed
the staircase. 'Not that I suppose we'll find anything of interest,' said the Special Branch man.
'When the Russians employ a sleeper they do things thoroughly. Probably recruited the traitor
when he was at Cambridge.'

'Cambridge? I never dreamt that Glodstone had been anywhere near a University. He certainly
never mentioned it.'

'Obviously not. The man's clearly an expert. One only has to look at the sort of books he
surrounded himself with to see that.'

The Headmaster gazed at the collected works of Sapper and felt peculiar. 'I really can't
believe it even now,' he said. 'Glodstone was a ghastly man but he didn't have the brains to be
a...what did you call it?'

'A sleeper,' said the Special Branch man, putting the cigar box containing the Countess's
letters in a plastic bag. 'Probably in code.'

The Headmaster tried to look on the bright side. 'Well, at least I won't have the damned man
around me any more,' he said. 'That's some relief. Have you any idea where he is?'

The Special Branch man hesitated. 'No harm in telling you now. We found his Bentley parked
near Tilbury yesterday. An East German tramp steamer sailed on Wednesday night.'

They went back to the Headmaster's study.

'I think that'll be all we'll require for the moment, sir. If anything should occur to you
that might be of use to us, we'd be grateful if you'd call this number. It's a phone drop, so
just leave your name.'

'And what about him?' asked the Headmaster glancing anxiously at Major Fetherington.

'What about him?'

'I can't have a master going about muttering "Dog-turd in Shrewsbury" in front of the boys all
the time. He's as mad as a hatter.'

'You should see Mr Slymne,' said the Special Branch man grimly. 'The Major's all right. He's a
hero by comparison. And you can always use him as a groundsman.'

But it was in Pine Tree Lane that feelings were most mixed.

'I'll never forgive you. Never,' wailed Mrs Clyde-Browne, ignoring the presence of ten
undercover agents dressed in overalls who had already installed double glazing and were now
redecorating the entire house. 'To think that I'll never see poor Peregrine again!'

'Oh, I don't know,' said Mr Clyde-Browne cheerfully, 'he'll probably get leave once in a
while. They can't keep a garrison in Antarctica for ever.'

'But he isn't used to the cold and he's got such a delicate chest.'

'There is that,' said Mr Clyde-Browne almost gaily. 'You can always go out and put flowers on
his grave. And he certainly won't need embalming. Things keep for ever on ice.'

'You murdering...No, I don't want flock fleur-de-lys in the kitchen,' she yelled, as one of
the agents tactfully interposed a wallpaper pattern book between them, 'and you can stop painting
the hall pink. That's a William Morris design.'

Mr Clyde-Browne made himself scarce. He had an interesting divorce case to consider involving
custody of a domestic cat and now that Peregrine was out of the way it might be advantageous to
goad his own wife a little further.

In Bognor Regis Glodstone looked at his face in the bathroom mirror, and failed to recognize
himself. It wasn't the first time, but it still shook him to see someone he didn't know staring
with such horrid amazement back at him. And horrid was the word. The Countess had been right in
claiming the plastic surgeon was good with burns, though, in Glodstone's livid opinion, she ought
have said 'at' them.

'Just let me get my hands on the sod,' he had shouted when the bandages had been removed and
he had finally been allowed the use of a mirror. 'He must have used a bloody flamethrower. Where
are my blasted eyebrows?'

'In the disposal bin,' said the Sister in charge. 'Anyway, you specifically asked for total
non-recognitive surgery.'

'Non-recog...bugger it, I did nothing of the sort. I came in here expecting to have my ears
adjusted, not to be turned into something that'd frighten a fucking punk dalek into a fit. And
why am I as bald as a coot?'

'We did a scalp transplant with another patient. He had alopecia totalis. It's taken very
well.'

'And what have I got then, galloping fucking ringworm?'

'It'll save you having to brush your hair again.'

'And shave,' said Glodstone, 'Who did you swop my face with, some terminal leper?'

'That's called the Spitfire effect,' said the Sister. 'Lots of pilots who crashed in the
Battle of Britain looked like that.'

'In that case I'd have thought the Messerschmidt effect would have been more appropriate,'
said Glodstone. 'Am I going to have to spend the rest of my life with these pustules? There's one
actually swelling on what's left of my nose.'

'They're just leeches. We use them for scavenging '

'Shit,' said Glodstone and had to be held down to prevent him from trying to dislodge the
things.

'We'll have to give you a sedative if you don't behave like a good boy.'

'Madam,' said Glodstone, managing to rally some dignity under threat of the needle, 'I have
had some considerable experience of boys and no sane one would allow his face to be used as a
watering hole for scavenging leeches. I could get tetanus, or the from loss of blood.'

'Nonsense. We ensure they're all perfectly healthy and they're only cleaning up the scar
tissue.'

'In that case they'll get bloody awful indigestion,' said Glodstone, 'they've got enough grub
there for the Lord Mayor's banquet. And get that sod out of my left nostril. I can't with my
hands in bandages. And what's that for?'

'Fingerprint removal,' said the Sister, and left Glodstone to contemplate a life without any
physical means of identification. Even his closest friends wouldn't know him now. Or want to.

But at least the Countess had been delighted. 'Darling,' she said when she came to collect
him, 'you look wonderful,'

'You've got fucking peculiar tastes is all I can say,' said Glodstone bitterly and was
promptly rebuked for using filthy language.

'You were something hush-hush in the War and you'd rather not talk about it. That's the line
you'll have to take,' she said, 'and from now on you're to call me Bobby.'

'But that's a boy's name,' said Glodstone, wondering if he was about to marry some sort of
lesbian with a truly horrific lust for disfigured men. It was a wonder he hadn't had a sex-change
operation.

'It's nice and thirtyish. Lots of girls were called Bobby then and it'll blend with the
Peke.'

Glodstone shuddered. He loathed Pekes and it was clear he was no longer going to be allowed to
call his life his own, let alone his face.

It had proved only too true. After a swift registry marriage at which he had had to declare
himself to be Clarence Sopwith Hillary, a combination of names Glodstone found personally
humiliating, unnecessarily provocative and, in the case of the last, in exceedingly bad taste,
they had driven on in Bobby's dinky Mini ('We mustn't be thought to consider ourselves a cut
above the neighbours, Clarence,' she told Glodstone, who knew damned well he was a hell of a lot
of cuts just about everywhere else) to the bungalow in Bognor Regis. It had fulfilled his direst
expectations. From its green-tiled roof to the petunias bordering the weedless lawn and the
cubistic carpet in the drawing room, it represented everything he had most despised.

'But it's pure art-deco, Clarence. I mean it's us.'

'It may be you,' said Glodstone, 'but I'm damned if it's me. And can't you call me something
other than Clarence? It's almost as foul as Cecil.'

'I shall call you Soppy, darling. And this is Beatrice.'

'Hell,' said Glodstone, who had just been bitten on the ankle by the Peke.

Now as he stood gazing at his own nonentity in the bathroom he knew he was beaten. They would
play bridge all evening with the Shearers and he'd get told off for bidding badly and have to
make the coffee and have to take that bloody Beatrice for a pee before going to bed. And he knew
what they'd drink. Crême de menthe. Constance Sugg had returned to her roots.

In a hedge in South Armagh, Peregrine, now Number 960401, stared through the night-sight of
his rifle at the figure moving in the field below. It could be a Garda but he didn't care. He'd
already notched up five IRA men, two poachers and an off-duty RUC constable, not to mention an
Army Landrover, to such awful effect that even the local Protestants had joined with the IRA in
declaring his sixteen square miles a No-Go Area, and the Army avoided the place. Peregrine didn't
care. He was in his element, doing what he had been trained to do. And every few weeks an
unmanned balloon (there'd been an unfortunate incident with a helicopter) would drift over for
him to shoot down and collect his ammunition and supplies.

Not that he needed the latter. He'd already bagged a sheep for his supper in the burrow he'd
dug halfway down an old well and was rather looking forward to it. The Major had said one should
live off the land, and he did. He squeezed the trigger and watched the man drop. Then he obeyed
another of the Major's dicta, that an army marched on its stomach, and crawled the two miles back
to his hide-out. Presently, in the happy knowledge he was doing exactly what he'd been told, he
pulled his rifle through and oiled it, and settled down to leg of lamb.

The End