by Sue Townsend
As Dwayne and Lancer were crossing the patch of grass in front of the One-Stop Centre, Camilla approached them, followed by Freddie, Tosca and Leo. She said to Lancer, ‘Inspector, could you tell me the time, please? My watch has packed in.’
Lancer said, ‘Before I tell you the time, madam, I should warn you that there is now a charge for this service.’
Camilla said, ‘How extraordinary. All I’m asking of you is that you glance at your watch and tell me the time.’
Dwayne sneaked a look at his own watch. It was 11.14 a.m.
Lancer said, ‘We are a public–private partnership and if we want to stay in business we have to charge for our services.’
Camilla said, ‘So how much are you going to charge for telling me the time?’
Lancer answered, ‘There is now a standard charge of one pound an enquiry.’
‘A pound!’ said Camilla. ‘That’s outrageous.’
Lancer said, ‘So you no longer want to know the time?’
‘No,’ said Camilla. ‘I can see from the position of the sun that it’s almost midday.’
Dwayne pulled the cuff back from his right wrist, exposing his watch. Then pretended to shield his eyes from the wintry sun.
Camilla said, ‘Ah, I see it’s eleven fifteen. Thank you, Constable.’
Leo lolloped over to Dwayne and dropped a stick he’d been carrying in his mouth at Dwayne’s feet. Dwayne picked up the slimy stick and hurled it as far as he could. The three dogs raced towards the stick, which had come to rest in a patch of mud.
Camilla said to Dwayne, ‘I hope you’re not going to charge me for throwing that stick.’
‘No,’ said Dwayne. ‘There will be no charge.’
When Leo brought the stick back and dropped it again at Dwayne’s feet, Lancer said, ‘Leave the stick where it is, lad. We’ve work to do.’
Walking on, they came to a district that was separated from the rest of the Flowers Estate by a high wall.
‘This,’ said Lancer, as he turned a key in a door in the wall, ‘keeps the kiddie fiddlers penned up and out of harm’s way.’
He opened the door and they walked through. Dwayne had expected to see furtive-looking men in greasy overcoats maundering around the streets, but to his surprise the men here looked as ordinary as the men on the rest of the estate.
When he remarked on this to Lancer, he was further surprised when Lancer said, ‘Most of the poor sods are as innocent as a lamb in springtime, lad.’
Dwayne said, ‘What are they doing in here then, sir?’
‘Malicious ankle-snappers have borne false witness against these poor blokes, boy. The evil little tykes have led ’em on and once they’ve eaten their sweeties they’ve gone squawking to ChildLine.’
Dwayne said nothing, but he wanted to defend abused children. His swimming teacher had often fumbled inside Dwayne’s Speedos, claiming he was checking for genital abnormalities. After a quick tour of the area housing the struck-off professionals (where Lancer and Dwayne were abused by a human rights lawyer who shouted, ‘You’re the puppets of a police state!’), they arrived back at the Control Centre. Inspector Lancer scanned Paris’s letter into a computer, showing Dwayne how to do it. The letter said:
Hi Mohammed,
I have wrote you a poem for your birthday, don’t laugh. I writ it last night when Fifty-cents was asleep. It took me a long time, I had to keep checking the spelling in that dictionary I nicked from school.
How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the…
Dwayne realized from the second line that she had attributed the authorship of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s famous poem to herself. He was bitterly disappointed in Paris.
Lancer said, ‘That’s not a bad poem. I wonder where she went to school?’
He keyed in Paris’s name and registration number and the screen came up with Paris’s life history:
Name: Paris Butterworth (19).
Father: Lee Butterworth (47), recidivist, prescribed methadone, currently unemployed.
Mother: Lorna Butterworth (51), currently employed at Grice-A-Go-Go as cloakroom attendant, many convictions for petty theft.
Sister: Chelsey Butterworth (19), pole dancer.
Sister: Tropez Butterworth (12), Arthur Grice Academy.
Brother: Dallas Butterworth (4), special needs nursery.
Paris Butterworth: 5' 1", 8 stone 3 lbs.
Medical record: Bronchitis every winter, otherwise healthy.
Menstrual cycle: First week of every month, complains of severe pain.
History: Unsettled at nursery school, constantly cried for mother. At four years could not handle eating implements. Vocabulary v. poor, when showed a picture of a cow could not name it.
Poor standard of hygiene, frequently wore dirty clothes and inadequate shoes for bad weather. Placed on at-risk register after mother could not satisfactorily explain large areas of bruising on buttocks and lower back.
Age eleven: Failed government targets for reading and writing.
Skills: Showed some aptitude for maths and art.
Arthur Grice Academy: Paris caught up with her peers under the tutorage of her English teacher. Her project on Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dog, Flush, earned her a pass in English Literature. However, she failed four other subjects and was permanently excluded from the academy when seven months pregnant.
Present circumstances: Lives alone with ten-month-old male child, Fifty-cents Lee Butterworth.
Father of the child: Unknown.
Current boyfriend: Mohammed Yousaf, currently in high-security wing of Wakefield Prison serving an indefinite sentence for potential terrorist activities – unusually large quantity of fertilizer found in outhouse of parents’ home. Father claimed fertilizer was for tomatoes. Attending officer reported unusually large quantity of tomatoes growing in greenhouse. Mohammed Yousaf arrested because had funny look in eye, had beard and was verbally abusive. Yousaf resisted arrest and anti-terrorist squad were called to attend before he was restrained.
Butterworth’s income: Standard single mother’s allowance £84.50 weekly. Butterworth now spends her time looking after the baby and watching property programmes on television. Non-smoker. Sexual status: Heterosexual. No sexual activity since birth of son.
Dwayne was pleased to find out that Paris had been chaste for such a long period. He scrolled on and was amazed to find that records of all Paris’s purchases had been listed. She seemed to buy an inordinate amount of Monster Munch crisps.
When he expressed his amazement at the extent of the information kept, Lancer said, ‘Vulcan knows everything about us, lad. It’s like a lovely warm duvet on a cold night.’
‘Vulcan is the god of fire and metalwork,’ said Dwayne, who had not yet realized that imparting such facts would not endear him to his superiors.
Lancer said, ‘Vulcan is a policeman’s best friend.’
Dwayne said, ‘Isn’t it a bit… well… intrusive?’
‘I’ll tell you what is intrusive, Lockhart, and that’s a bleeding terrorist bomb!’ said Lancer. ‘What you’ve got to take on board, lad, is that we’re living in tomorrow’s world, today. We are science fiction. The Yanks have got satellites that can guide a thread through a fuckin’ needle!’
Dwayne glanced out of the window at the grey clouds hanging over the Fez.
Another new recruit, Peter Penny, asked anxiously, ‘Can the spy satellite see through curtains, sir?’ He was remembering last night’s humiliation when he had persuaded his wife of three years to try a daring new sexual position.
‘Curtains?’ asked Inspector Lancer scornfully.
‘Yes,’ said Peter Penny, ‘thick, velvet curtains with a lining.’
Lancer shook his head. Was this rookie an idiot? ‘The new satellites can see inside a fucking mountain! They can pick up a whisper. They’re listening to us now.’
‘Who is?’ asked Dwayne.
Lancer activated the camera a
t the bottom of Prince Charles’s garden and watched Charles pleading with his hens to give him an occasional egg. He said, ‘The Yanks. The Chinese. The Russians. The French. The Arabs. The World.’
‘And are we listening to them?’
‘Of course we are,’ said Lancer.
Dwayne wouldn’t let it go. ‘So everybody knows everything?’ he asked.
Lancer watched Charles walk discontentedly up the garden path and go into his kitchen and said, ‘We have to work on that premise, lad, yes.’
‘So what’s the point?’
‘Ah, now that I can’t tell you, Dwayne. As an employee of a public–private partnership I’m subject to commercial confidentiality.’
Dwayne Lockhart was a local man who had made good. Unable to read at the age of eleven, he had transferred to the Arthur Grice Academy and been taught the basics of reading and writing by Mr Nutting, a shambolic eccentric English teacher who made the children laugh and kept order in the classroom by raising an eyebrow. To Dwayne’s distress, Mr Nutting was sacked for ‘failing to adhere to the national curriculum’. Before he left he told his classes that they must read at least one book a week. ‘Books should be as vital to you as food, water and oxygen,’ he said.
He had given them all a sheet of paper on which was written a list of the books he wanted them to read. Dwayne still kept the paper inside his wallet. He had read all of the books on the list, but he kept the paper because Mr Nutting had scrawled on the bottom of his booklist: ‘Dwayne, nobody can choose the family they are born into. Both of my parents were alcoholics. You are an intelligent lad. Don’t waste your life. Yours, Simon Nutting.’
Dwayne had told nobody else in the class that Mr Nutting’s parents were alkies or that Mr Nutting had put it down in writing that he, Dwayne Lockhart, was intelligent, but he read the words to himself when his own parents were drunk and fighting in the street, when they called him a fucking gay boff because he was always reading.
When Dwayne and Peter Penny were alone in front of a bank of cameras in the surveillance room, Peter said, ‘What are we looking for?’
Remembering Inspector Lancer’s mini-lecture on surveillance, Dwayne said, ‘Unusual or suspicious behaviour.’
Peter said, ‘But everybody on the screen looks suspicious.’
Dwayne agreed, he was looking at the on-screen image of Charles and Camilla’s living room. Charles was writing at a small bureau. Camilla was talking to one tall and two small dogs as if they were not only human beings but had valid opinions. ‘So you think I should have my highlights done, do you, Leo?’
Dwayne could not resist zooming in on the journal Charles was writing.
September 25th
Still no eggs. iam at my wits' end. What more can I do? I have provided the hens with a decent diet and a splendid coop. I lavish attention on them, but nothing back – they barely acknowledge my existence. I am utterly crushed by their ingratitude.
Camilla and I had an extremely distressing row earlier. I was left trembling and near to tears. God knows, I am the most tolerant of men, but I am finding her inability to stop smoking increasingly irritating. The sight of Eccles, one of God's innocent creatures, with a cigarette hanging from her beak caused me intolerable pain.
Camilla and i are now reconciled, although I notice it was not me she consulted about the advisability of highlights, but Leo – who is ill-qualified to give advice on hair. His own coat is permanently bedraggled however much i brush it.
Dwayne wondered if somebody, somewhere had watched him struggling to write poetry in his bedroom or playing air guitar in front of the mirrored wardrobe door. He blushed at the thought of what else they might have seen.
4
Violet Toby, the Queen’s next-door neighbour, best friend and confidante, had dropped in to complain to the Queen that Prince Harry had called her granddaughter Chanel a ‘minging spag’ and if he ever got to be king, he would lock her in the Tower of London and order her ‘minging head to be chopped off’.
The Queen said, ‘That’s highly unlikely to happen, Violet, since we live in a republic. And anyway, Harry will be king only over my dead body.’
Violet the pedant lifted her swollen feet on to a tapestry-covered footstool and adjusted the skirt of her navy and white polka-dot dress. The Queen noticed that there was a strip of white showing at the roots of Violet’s otherwise red hair.
Violet said, ‘Charles will be king over your dead body. And if Charles fell under a bus?’
The Queen said, ‘Then of course William would be king.’
‘And if William fell off some scaffolding…’ said Violet ‘…and broke his neck and died?’
The Queen said bleakly, ‘Given those unlikely circumstances, then Harry would be king. Unless, of course, William has married by then and had children.’
Violet said, ‘Well that ain’t likely, is it? ’E’s not even courtin’.’
The Queen gave a deep sigh, imagining Harry and his hoody friends on the balcony of Buckingham Palace swigging from cans of lager and giving the crowd below the V sign. She said to Violet, ‘We must find a wife for William.’
The conversation turned to the Queen’s toothache and then to teeth in general.
‘I ’ad a set of false teeth for my twenty-first birthday,’ said Violet. ‘Mam and Dad bought the top set and the rest of the family clubbed together an’ bought the bottom.’
Violet gnashed her porcelain teeth at the Queen. ‘The dentist didn’t want to take me teeth out. He said they were perfect, but me dad said, “No. I want all ’er teeth took out, an’ false ’uns put in. It’ll save her trouble later in life.” ’
The Queen was horrified. She said, ‘What a beastly thing to do.’
Violet bridled, ‘No, Dad were right. I’ve ’ad a lot of trouble in my life, with money, men an’ our Barry, but I’ve never lost a day’s work, or a night’s sleep, with toothache.’
The Queen momentarily felt a little jealous of Violet’s teeth. She had spent a very unpleasant night wishing that Mr Barwell, by royal appointment, dental surgeon to the Queen, was still on call. At the slightest twinge, Barwell would be flown in the royal jet to wherever she was staying. Now, thought the Queen bitterly, she had no dentist at all. Mr Patel, the National Health Service dentist, had recently escaped from the Fez and nobody had taken his place.
Violet said, ‘I know a woman what takes her own teeth out with a pair of pliers, do you want me to have a word with ’er?’
‘Goodness, no, it sounds terribly dangerous.’
‘No, it’s dead safe, she sterilizes the pliers first, in a pan of boiling water.’
They were sitting in the Queen’s tiny front room on matching Louis XVI armchairs next to the gas fire. They were waiting for Emmerdale to come on the television. It was going to be a double episode. This one-off special had been trailed all week. The whole population of Emmerdale Village were to go on a coach outing to an agricultural show in a fictional county. The trails had shown the villagers having a jolly singsong, then cut to the coach braking to avoid a stray sheepdog. There had been close shots of various actors/villagers screaming as the coach slid down an embankment on to a railway line below. The Queen and Violet were avid to find out which of their favourite characters would survive the accident.
Harris and Susan were also waiting; they were curious to find out what was to happen to the dog. Violet’s dog, Micky, a gruff-faced, ginger mongrel with a tail that curled on to his back, was not allowed inside the Queen’s house; Micky was emotionally unstable, and given to sudden irrational outbursts of aggression. He sat on the Queen’s doorstep patiently waiting for Violet to come out.
To change the subject from teeth, the Queen asked how Barry was, Violet’s delinquent forty-five-year-old son.
Violet sighed. ‘He’s got a psychiatric social worker now, a woman. And according to Barry, this woman says Barry’s problems are all my fault. She says, locking him in the understairs cupboard when he was a little kid has made him wa
nt to destroy authority, and has gave him a syndrome.’
The Queen said, ‘Charles blames me and his father for most of the problems he’s had in his life. He claims he was neglected, which is terribly unfair. We saw him at least once a day when we were in the country, and his nanny adored him.’
Violet said, ‘I think Barry should be locked up. I’m ’aving to hide all my lighters and matches again.’
The Queen nodded sympathetically. Charles was troubled, but as far as she knew he was not an arsonist. The Queen qualified many of her observations about people by saying, ‘As far as one knows.’ Even members of her own family seemed to have so many secrets. She had a few herself.
A burst of dramatic, urgent-sounding music caught the two women’s attention immediately. A news band at the bottom of the screen said in fat red letters ‘Breaking News’.
Violet said, ‘Now what?’ She was sick of having her programmes interrupted by real life. She never watched the news out of choice. Who wanted to know about wars and disasters? She couldn’t do anything to stop them, could she? So why worry herself, she was already on three blood pressure tablets a day.
The leader of the Conservative Party, a grey man in a grey suit, had resigned in order to spend more time with his latest family, and a new leader, a fresh-faced youngish man with a shock of luxuriant black hair, had taken his place. He was ‘Boy’ English.
‘Good gracious,’ said the Queen. ‘It’s Boy. His father ran a stud at Newmarket, his grandmother was one of my ladies-of-the-bedchamber.’
Boy was being interviewed by the BBC’s senior political correspondent. ‘And what is at the top of your political agenda, Mr English?’ asked the bespectacled reporter.
‘I want to restore the monarchy,’ said Boy. ‘I want to see Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, back on the throne, and I want to see Jack Barker and the Cromwellians consigned to the dustbin of history.’
When the Queen didn’t say anything, Violet said, ‘Well, I ain’t voting for ’im. I’d sooner casserole me own arm than vote Tory, an’ anyway, I don’t want to lose you, Liz.’