by J. S. Monroe
“Try that,” he said, passing me a half-empty gin and tonic. “I put the ice in and it’s ruined. I told them it tastes like the bloody swimming pool.”
I sniffed it and put it down on the tiled sideboard. I didn’t want to hang around for long. I was expecting him to be with someone on Christmas morning, one of the many middle-aged divorcees who had come knocking at his door within months of mum dying, but he appeared to be on his own. There were no signs of Christmas about the house, except for a small, balding tree propped up against the wall in the corner of the hall. It was in a plastic red bucket and hadn’t been decorated.
“I was living with a woman called Annalese,” I began bluntly. “On a barge. We were very happy. She was killed last week, by a bomb.”
My dad grunted and walked over to the fridge. He was a big man, well stacked. “Beer?” he asked, his head still in the fridge.
“Ta.”
He never used to look at me if there was the faintest whiff of emotion in the air. Now was no exception. His back turned, I slid a packet of cigarettes off the table into my pocket.
“A bomb you say?” he said, pulling at the can with his fat fingers. I knew he was feeling awkward about how little he knew. I let him suffer.
“Last Tuesday. Oxford Street.”
“That was a big one.”
“500lbs.”
“I haven’t been into town this year. Too damn risky. At least with the IRA you knew who the enemy were.”
“Are you still friendly with Walter?”
“Walter? Saw him only last week. Why?”
“I need to talk to him.”
“Not quite your sort is he?”
“He’s my godfather.”
“Is he? Never knew that.”
“Nor did I. Is he still working?”
“About to retire, I think. Of course you never really know with him.”
My mysterious godfather was an American, from the West Coast, but he had spent most of his life in London, and was as good as English. He worked in some capacity for the security services, though nobody knew exactly what he did. There were various rumours along the lines that he was employed by the CIA to keep an eye on the British, but most assumed he was here because he preferred the English to his fellow countrymen. “Talk to Walter if he talks to you,” mum used to say.
“What’s he do again?” I asked.
“Don’t know. Don’t ask. Not much these days.”
“I need to talk with him.”
“The last time he saw you, you were wearing a decent set of clothes and could speak properly. Does that lot set off the metal detectors?” he asked, motioning towards my earrings.
I walked into the sitting room at the back of the house to drink my beer. I could hear him fiddling around in the kitchen, pretending to clear up. Too much had happened for a reconciliation. Our last encounter captured the unique flavour of our relationship. He was one of the first to drive through the newly opened bypass at Twyford Down (he had queued at 6 a.m. for the privilege) and I was there to greet him, shouting “scum” through the window of his Volvo estate, pouring acid on the roof and running a Stanley knife along the nearside panel.
Later, when I was arrested, the police contacted him about pressing charges. He declined. Even I was surprised. Deep down, I figured, he felt responsible for the way I had turned out. We had never talked about my mum’s death. I was back at boarding school within the week, sitting in a maths lesson wondering what all the fuss had been about. My world hadn’t changed. The only clue that she had died was a small piece in the Portsmouth Evening News which he sent me. (No letter, just the cutting, the date written usefully at the top in case I wanted to file it.)
“What did you say she was called?” he asked, joining me in front of the patio windows. He worked his faded plum trousers sideways then upwards. Emotions were looming again.
“Annalese.”
“Unusual.”
“Yeah. She was.”
There was a pause as we both looked out on to the blanched lawn.
“Needs weeding,” he said. “Look, if I give him a call, he’ll ask me what it’s about.”
“Tell him I have got some information about the bombings and I can’t risk talking to anyone else,” I replied, and started walking to the car.
5
The evening after I had seen Annalese playing in the band, I hitched a lift with a farmer down to Porthcurno beach, and walked up the cliffs to the Minack, cut into the rocks like a Roman amphitheatre. The performance had already started and I stood on the path above, listening to the laughter and the sea. It was a warm evening and the show had sold out. I didn’t have any money anyway. Then I heard the tambourine being shaken. I tried to imagine her face and was frustrated that I couldn’t see it. I walked around to the front of the theatre and dropped down below the path on to some gorse-covered rocks. The sea was swelling below me. On the far side of the bay, Atlantic rollers were throwing themselves against a granite outcrop. There was a hidden thud as each wave disintegrated, but the spray seemed to explode silently, the plumes hanging in the air too long.
I looked the other way, towards Land’s End. The sun had recently set and the wounded sky was scorched a deep red. It had all the ingredients of a spiritual moment, but there were voices growing louder above me, bays of rich laughter staining the night air. I sat down on a rock, still out of sight, and lost my appetite to go any further. I reminded myself I hadn’t come here to fight. I tried to ignore the voices (there wasn’t a Cornish one among them) but it was impossible. It was the corporate crew who really got my goat, the ones who thought Shakespeare was full of clichés. The last time I had gone to the theatre I had managed to smuggle myself into a hospitality box as a waiter. I poured one drink down a Laura Ashley dress, another over a draft business proposal, and placed a small incendiary device in the managing director’s cigar box. The MD’s giggling tart of a secretary was so drunk when it exploded that she thought it was part of the show. She applauded wildly, until she noticed her boss was unconscious.
I was still smiling at the memory when a small child came tottering down the path on his own towards me. I looked up, wondering where his mother was, and then I saw her strolling around the corner a few yards behind. She had an easy gait, loose-limbed, taller than I remembered.
“Alright?” she said, her smile tinted with recognition. I tossed a stone into the dust and looked ahead.
“I want to throw up.”
“Come here Leafe, back from the edge,” she said, taking the boy’s hand. She started swinging his arm backwards and forwards, enough to make him giggle. “What’s the matter then?” she asked, turning to me.
“I hope they pay you well,” I said, nodding up at the theatre above us.
“Enough, why?”
“I wouldn’t stand in front of them for nothing.”
“Where you from, London?” she asked, bending down to look at a piece of purple quartz in a rock. She stroked it, and Leafe did the same. She was wearing a silver ring on her thumb, and her nails were painted black.
“Came down last week.”
“What for?”
“What for?” I said, turning to her. Her question surprised me. I hadn’t planned on telling anyone what I was doing in Cornwall.
“It’s a long way to come.”
“I had to leave in a hurry. Kept going, I suppose.”
She looked at me, scrutinising my face for more information. I wanted to tell her everything.
“You running away, then?” she asked after a while.
“Taking a break.”
“What from?”
“This and that.”
“A woman?”
“Where’s his dad?” I said, nodding at Leafe. I didn’t like her questions.
“No idea. Left the next morning. No, that’s not quite true.”
“What was his name?”
“His name?”
“I might know him.”
“‘Tree’. He
spent most of his time falling out of one.”
The name rang a bell. He was a protester, famous for constructing walkways high up in the canopies of threatened forests.
“And you preferred tambourines.”
There was no answer as she bent down next to Leafe. She wasn’t wearing anything beneath her loose purple vest. Leafe was still bewitched by the quartz. “I see him occasionally, on the telly. He believes in what he’s doing. What’s your name?” she asked, not looking up.
“Dutchie,” I replied, breaking another promise.
We looked at each other for a moment, and then she stood up.
“It’s easy to lose yourself round here, if you need to,” she said. A bell was rung somewhere above us. “I’ve got to go.”
“Tambourine solo?”
“Flute. Three notes, but they’re long notes. Come.”
“How do I get in?”
“You can sit in the dressing room,” she said, smiling. “With Leafe.”
I walked back up the path with them. Leafe held my hand and wanted to swing between us. We swung him until our arms ached, and were only saved when Bottom walked passed us into the dressing room wearing an ass’s head. Leafe must have seen it a hundred times, but he laughed and laughed and so did I. For the first time in months I felt good inside. Tree demos weren’t really my kind of thing – they attracted the wrong sort, the non-violent, fluffy sort – but it was an encouraging start.
The following evening I saw the whole show and went with her and some of the cast down to Treen beach, where we swam in the moonlit sea. It was a warm night and our clothes were piled in a heap on the sand. Annalese and I concentrated on Leafe, but he was little more than a conduit. Back on the shore, we traced each other’s shadows in the sand with sticks. They were comically long and thin, cast by the low moon.
“Careful,” I said, as she pulled the stick up my twelve-foot-long leg. She looked up at me and smiled. We were still naked and I felt small in the cold. I pulled on my cock when she glanced away at Leafe; unfortunately my shadow did the same.
“Wasn’t sure you even had one,” she said, tracing my groin. The others were sitting on the rocks fifty yards away, smoking and drinking. I began to feel turned on, watching the arc of her spine disappear into darkness.
“One of the cast reckons you were involved with Class War,” she said, taking me by surprise. Her tone was brittle.
“And if I was?” I said, shifting awkwardly.
“Stand still. Doesn’t bother me.” She was slipping slowly down my other leg. “Were you?” she asked again.
I studied her for a moment. She was incandescent in the moonlight, untouchable.
“I wasn’t with them for long. Too organised for kosher anarchists like me,” I grinned. “They started having AGMs, taking votes.”
“There, finished,” she said, coming towards me. “I’m cold.”
“Who recognised me?” I asked, as I passed her a T-shirt.
“Charlie. You know, with the didgeridoo?”
“Never seen him before.”
“He’s alright,” she said, wrapping a skirt around her. Her manner had changed a little; the intimacy of the swimming had slipped. I walked over towards the water’s edge on my own, carrying my boots. I could talk politics all night, but I was hoping for something else. I found her sudden changes in tempo unsettling. One moment she was grabbing my cock under the water, pulling me towards her, the next she was withdrawn, releasing sudden, unexpected questions.
“Do you remember the battle of the beanfield?” she asked more warmly. She had come across to join me and was looking out to sea. The moonlight picked out the white surf like ultraviolet.
“Bit before my time.”
“I’d just turned fifteen. The police that day, they were crazy, out of their heads. We saw them shooting up behind the Stones and then running out, clubbing whoever they met. I watched a child, he can’t have been more than ten, being chased through a field and beaten around the head.”
“That’s what we’re up against,” I said, encouraged by her concern. “It was easy then, when it was just the cops. The state’s less focused now, more disguised.”
We watched a wave reach the shore, impeded by the one before. The pebbles applauded as it was sucked away.
“Are you still fighting, then?” she asked, linking her arm in mine.
“Always.”
“Me too.”
*
I drove straight back to London after visiting my dad, and spent the rest of Christmas Day on the barge, in bed as Annalese had suggested. I hadn’t been able to get away from him quick enough, not because he had been particularly hostile, but because he was showing signs of wanting to talk, and I couldn’t handle that. I waited two days before ringing him and he spoke quietly on the phone, his voice showing the same restraint as it had when we had parted. Walter was happy to see me on the 29th, he said, and then he paused, trying to bring himself to say something more, or perhaps to extract a few words from me. I hung up.
Walter was fatter than I remembered, much fatter. He was wearing round, fusewire glasses, half hidden in the fleshy folds of his face. A few more weeks and they would be absorbed altogether. To my surprise, he wanted to meet at a side entrance of the Security Services building at the south end of Vauxhall Bridge. (It used to be occupied solely by MI6 but the new Labour government had forced them to share it with MI5.) Bypassing the main body of the building, he took me in a side lift to the fourth floor, where there was a canteen, with a balcony looking out across the Thames.
The place was like any other office canteen, except for the eerie, diffuse light streaming in through a row of thick green windows, and a scanner shaped like an arch which everyone had to pass through. (I didn’t set any alarms off. As a gesture of goodwill, I had removed all my studs and earrings except for the one through my lower lip.) There was also a disproportionate number of security guards checking passes. Walter walked towards the arch and began to reach for something in his pocket but the guards waved him through. He turned to wait for me. For the first time in my life I wasn’t searched either.
“They were expecting you,” Walter said, as we joined the queue. “Visitors are welcome these days, well kind of, anyway. Who did you vote for?”
“I didn’t,” I said, looking around. I felt edgy. I had been in too much trouble to be ignored by places like this.
“It was the PM’s idea,” he continued. “A delayed reaction to glasnost, I guess. You must be one of the first visitors in here. Hey, there’s even an open day next week. You should come along. It’ll be fun.”
I wasn’t listening. People nodded and smiled at Walter as they passed us with their food. Walter scrutinised each tray as it went by, piecing together the day’s menu.
“No cookies today?” he said to one woman as she passed. “Too bad.” He turned around and gave me a tray. “No cookies. Have what you want, kid, on the state.”
I took the tray, trying to ignore being called a kid. I wanted to know what sort of person worked so consciously for authority. They looked a pretty mundane bunch, more women than men, sporting sensible skirts and white blouses with long sleeves. It was probably just another job for them. The only men I saw were wearing grey shoes. No one seemed to be looking directly at me. They probably knew everything there was to know anyway. My file couldn’t be far away.
We were served our coffee and headed towards a row of heavy green doors, behind which was a smooth brown pillar and a balcony. Walter insisted I should see the view. He was carrying two coffees and three large sticky buns on a tray, which he balanced precariously in one hand. He struggled with the door and I stepped forward to prop it open for him. As he passed I noticed a small bead of sweat forming on his brow.
It was chilly outside and we were the only people braving the cold, but the sky was clear and London was shining in the weak winter sunlight. Walter walked over to the metal table nearest the river and sat down on a thin seat, his fleshy sides spi
lling over the edges. The size of his distended stomach forced him to sit leaning backwards, legs spread apart. His fly zip was open several inches at the top. I sat down opposite him and watched as he tucked into one of the buns. Behind him I could see Big Ben, tanned and wealthy. We sat in silence for a while as he ate two of the donuts in quick succession.
“I’ve got something for you,” he said finally, his mouth still full. “I bought it in a bookshop in Oxford a few years ago.”
He wiped his sticky hand on a paper napkin and pulled out a small hardback book from his breast pocket. It was a copy of When We Were Six by A.A. Milne. I shifted awkwardly in my seat.
“I never was much of a godfather, but you were a pretty lousy godson, too. To hell with dates, Happy twenty-first.”
I tried to look at some of the pictures but I suddenly wanted to go. He had once read the book to me when I was a child. My mouth was filling with the unpleasant taste of family. The choice of rendezvous was also getting to me. If it was a test of some kind, I was failing it.
“It’s not a first edition, but it’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he continued.
I flicked through the pages and said nothing.
“How old are you now, anyway?” he asked, hesitating a moment before picking up the third donut. I put the book down on the metal table harder than I meant to.
“Does it matter?”
“Not to me. Don’t you want it?” he asked, nodding at the book. I ignored him and looked around, wondering who preened the conical fir trees on each ledge of the building. A security guard was walking past on one of the levels above us, talking into a radio. Below us two joggers were running along the river front, moving wide when they saw a drunk asleep on a bench.
“Your dad was exaggerating,” Walter said after a pause. “I was expecting some kind of wild animal.”
“Yeah?”
The comment annoyed me and I sucked on the ring in my lip. How far would I get, I wondered, if I just got up and walked away? I would be arrested within seconds. “They think it was a mistake, by the way,” he continued, licking his sugary fingers. “Not enough people around.”