by Lawton, John
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Not dizzy or anything?’
‘No more than usual.’
‘Then it’s . . . me?’
‘More likely to be me, I should think.’
‘Eh?’
‘Not sure I can.’
She grabbed him by the cock. ‘What do you mean “not sure if I can”? Troy, it’s up, the damn thing is up!’
‘The flesh is willing, it’s the spirit that’s weak.’
‘What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean? I thought a standing prick had no conscience?’
‘Conscience has no part of it. It’s . . . me . . . me now . . . me as. . .’
‘As what?’
The telephone rang. They both stared at it.
‘I have to,’ he said.
She turned her back on him, yanked down the sheets and pulled them up to her chin.
‘Freddie? It’s me, George.’
George Bonham. Retired Station Sergeant Bonham. Troy’s oldest friend in London. The man in charge of his first nick in Stepney all those years ago.
‘Jus’ to let you know. Walter Stilton’s widow, Edna, died today.’
Troy was taking this in. It wasn’t registering much. He was more conscious of the grief in George’s voice than he was of any response of his own. He’d known all the Stiltons when he was younger. He’d even been involved in the investigations into old Walter’s murder during the war, but he hadn’t seen Edna Stilton in . . .
‘Can’t talk no more. Gotta go. This has been a blow, Freddie, it really has.’
And the phone went dead.
Anna was staring at him now. Troy watched the anger in her melt. She flung back the sheets, said, ‘You might as well get in,’ and then wrapped him in cool linen and warm flesh.
‘Who was that?’
‘George Bonham. Someone I almost knew just died.’
‘It’s your night for being elliptical, isn’t it. What am I supposed to understand by the word “almost”?’
Troy lay back on the pillow and wished Anna would ask him a question he could answer in words of one syllable and crystal clarity. ‘There are times in life when you meet people who don’t want to know you and scarcely acknowledge you. I dated – at least, I think that’s the word – her daughter.’
‘I doubt that’s the word. Unless it was before 1935.’
‘Almost—’
‘That word again.’
‘It was 1940. And round two was in ‘41.’
‘1941? That’s when you and I met.’
Was it? Was it really that long ago?
‘And I don’t think Edna Stilton thought I was right for her daughter.’
‘Ah . . . Old Stinker’s daughter.’
‘You knew her?’
‘No. Never met her. But I almost knew her father.’
‘Almost?’
‘It was my first year in Forensic Pathology. I worked on Stilton’s corpse after the old boy was killed, if you recall.’ So she had.
‘Let’s change the subject, shall we?’
‘So … wunderkind . . . what do we do now?’
‘Lie here like brother and sister?’
‘You forget, Troy. I know your sisters.’
16
Troy passed a pleasant Friday. Doing nothing. Anna fluttered around him in another brightly coloured summer dress like some exotic insect. She was, it would seem, as she had said, happy. Happy was the word. In all the time they had been lovers his capacity to make her happy was something to which he had given not a split second’s thought. Now, sex notwithstanding, he seemed to have achieved something almost effortlessly. But when he thought about it, the lack of effort meant it was not his achievement at all. It was hers.
She vanished into the village on his sister’s bicycle and returned to find him sleeping on the west-facing verandah in the afternoon sun.
‘The fishmonger was open. I know it’s Friday, and it’s corny, but would you be OK with cod and chips?’
‘Fine,’ said Troy.
‘Good. Then perhaps you’d find us a suitable wine.’
‘Tizer,’ said Troy. ‘Or Vimto at a pinch. That’s what you’d find in a chip shop.’
‘No, Troy. Nip down to the cellar and dig out a bottle of Pouilly Fumé – I’ve always had a taste for that Couve de Murville you bought a couple of years ago.’
Another meal in the kitchen. Another bottle of Pooh Foom. Another conversation that skirted meaning to remain inconsequential. Happy was still the word.
Around ten p.m. Anna took herself, and Troy’s copy of the Allingham novel, to bed. No winks, no smiles, not a hint of innuendo. Troy knew he wouldn’t sleep for hours yet so he took himself and a second bottle of Pouilly Fumé back to the verandah. He stretched out, stared into the darkness until he could see as far as the willows down by the river, listened intently until he could hear the rustling of hedgehogs in the hedgerows. He was still staring when Rod found him around midnight.
The first he knew was Rod peering down at him only inches from his face. ‘Are you all right? You look awful.’
‘Thanks for nothing. It’s just the insomnia. Leaves me drained but I still can’t sleep at will, as it were.’
‘Freddie, seriously, have you thought about—’
‘Don’t say it. Just don’t say it. Right now the world and his wife all want me to retire or resign. Don’t waste your breath.’
‘Actually, Freddie, I was going to say, have you thought about taking a holiday? You know, Greece or Italy.’
Rod stood over him, a bit déshabillé, sweaty from the day’s heat, collar popped, tie at half-mast. Troy softened. ‘Let’s change the subject. Park your backside and tell me something of the world outside. Lately I feel like one of those pre-war wives locked in the house all day by the working husband, reliant on him for all contact with the world.’
Rod picked up Troy’s glass, filled it to the brim and sat on a battered wicker chair. ‘Right now my wife has gone straight to bed. Pissed off with me that I got stuck in a meeting until nearly ten o’clock.’
‘Fine. Bore me rigid. I’m all ears. Who was in the meeting?’
‘Gaitskell, Brown, Wilson and me.’
‘The shadow-cabinet cabal?’
‘If you like. We had some rather disturbing news to discuss.’
‘White Fish Authority run out of chips? Ministry of Works not working?’
‘No election next month.’
‘Was there supposed to be one?’
‘Our narks in the government were putting money on July. Looks more likely to be the autumn now.’
‘You have narks in the government?’
‘Just a figure of speech. We know what they want us to know, would be a better way of putting it. But I know one thing they don’t know I know.’
‘You just lost me.’
‘October would be a good month for the PM to go to the country. Ike is coming over for a visit. Reflected glory, basking for the use of. Macmillan would be a fool not to call an election after that.’
‘Ike’s coming?’
‘Told me so himself. Macmillan’s been nagging him about it for ages. I know he’s going to say yes, because he telephoned me and asked if there was any chance of getting some of his wartime pals together. Probably towards the end of the summer, August or September. He’ll make a state visit. Be seen on the news with Mac at this do or that. Meet the Queen, and all that. In fact, you’re finding out about it before the PM, but I’d have to have told you sooner or later. He’s coming here for a weekend – we’ll have the reunion bash here.’
‘I see.’
‘Do you, Freddie? Extra security. American Secret Service chaps. Special Branch. I know how fond you are of Special Branch.’
‘Be my guest. They can hardly exclude me from my own home, can they?’
Troy could see Rod far better than Rod could see him, and the expression on Rod’s face told him that he’d just sai
d the opposite of what Rod was thinking: Rod was praying Troy would stay away.
‘Don’t worry, brer. I won’t fuck it up for you. You make Ike feel at home. See if he can’t win the election for you.’
‘God knows, we’ve got to win this one. Bloody country’s going to hell in a handcart.’
‘Really? I thought we’d never had it so good?’
‘Not funny, Freddie.’
‘No . . . wasn’t kidding. Just look at things without the blinkers of ideology for a moment. Wages are up, pretty nigh full employment, consumer hardware available by the wagonload on tick
‘Freddie, as you well know, that is the problem – on “tick”. We are a nation living on the slate. We have become the something-for-nothing-live-now-pay-later society. Do you know, I was watching one of those wretched game shows the other night—’
’Take Your Pick.’
‘As a matter of fact it was.’
‘And they gave away a car.’
‘Yes. They gave away a car. Can’t you see how emblematic that is of greed, of things coveted and not earned?’
‘As I recall, Rod, the car was a Mini – you drive one yourself – and it was won by a factory-floor worker from Leicester who made the clips that keep vacuum-cleaner bags from spewing dust everywhere. I would imagine he does it nine hours a day, biff, bash, bosh every few seconds, eats soggy sandwiches out of a plastic hamper for lunch, and bikes home in the pouring Leicester rain to eat food that’s come out of a tin and—’
‘What is your point?’
‘My point is that while you’re driving your Mini, which you think is your right, you are also sneering at the consumer society and the fat, lazy prole who somehow betrays your socialist ideal of the honest working man. The fat prole, who is also the same man as the honest working man, makes all those consumers durables – Mini cars included – the free availability of which causes you so much intellectual grief. Fuckit, Rod, they make the goods, they’ve a right to own them. What’s good for the goose. Workers with cars and washing-machines does not automatically bespeak a society in degeneration, any more than Sylvia Steele and her gold-plated Daimler. And if you go into an election with that approach they’ll vote you out for the third time in a row. What I sometimes feel you never learn is that “Jam Tomorrow” gets a bit frustrating. And I rather think Macmillan’s motto is “Jam Today”. What else was that tuppence off the price of a pint about in the last budget? You call it pandering to the electorate. Mac calls it “Jam Today”.’
Troy thought Rod might explode. Instead he picked up the bottle, topped up his glass, said, ‘Drink me,’ and burst into a fit of unparliamentary giggles. ‘You know, you should come out with Gaitskell some night. You’ve got pretty much the same sense of humour. He’d be laughing himself silly if he were here now.’
‘Any time,’ said Troy.
Rod quaffed half the glass in a single gulp. He said nothing. They listened to the sounds of midnight, the distant chimes of the clock on the tower of St Job’s.
‘Have you heard any whispers?’ Troy said at last.
‘Whispers? Whispers of what?’
‘Sasha’s little escapade.’
‘Oh. No . . . not a peep. I rather think Lawrence has pulled a few strings to keep that under wraps. But, then, that’s why you made sure he was there when old Trubshawe came round, wasn’t it?’
Troy said nothing.
‘Y’know. It was necessary. I can’t deny that . . . but doesn’t it make you wonder what class and a bit of power can do? Doesn’t it make you wonder just what we can get away with?’
‘That’s what Trubshawe said.’
‘And, when you come to think of it, Hugh got away with murder.’
A few years back in a fit of rage Hugh had admitted to beating one of Sasha’s lovers to death. It was, Troy had argued, nothing they could ever prove, and hence nothing they should ever talk about. Rod had not raised the matter even at the time of Hugh’s suicide. Now they had buried Hugh, and the problem with him. Troy rather hoped they’d never have to mention it again. It was not that the Troys had a skeleton in the cupboard: they had their own private boneyard.
Rod had closed his eyes. He wasn’t asleep. Troy could hear the waking rhythm of his breathing. A cricket settled on his shoulder, drawn by the light from the room behind him. Troy wondered. Suppose his brother was made of wood? What twists of conscience was the cricket whispering into Rod’s wooden head?
No cricket landed on his shoulder.
17
On the Saturday morning, as he lay in bed next to a sleeping Anna, Troy heard the pop-shuffle-grunt of an old BSA motorbike-sidecar combination approaching. He slid his arm from under her, hoping to slip out without her noticing. They had got through two nights without sex, a whole day without recrimination. All the same, he wasn’t about to risk the consequences of a morning quickie. He picked up his clothes from the floor and tiptoed to a bathroom on the other side of the house. Half an hour later, dressed and shaved, he sought out the Fat Man down by the pig pens.
Every so often the familiarity of the scene struck Troy as unchanging, timeless in the way visitors to the National Trust expect things to be timeless. The Fat Man would wear, as ever, his Second World War Heavy Rescue blue blouse, almost unchanging except that it got tattier with every year that passed. His Thermos and his ham sandwich would sit on the bench ready for whenever the need for elevenses hit him, which bore no relation to what the clock actually said, and the Fat Man would be found musing on some nonsense he’d found in the daily paper and occasionally reading snippets out loud to the pig. But the Fat Man was full of surprises. Today . . . Troy had had no idea the Fat Man could juggle.
As he came down the path to the edge of the orchard, the Fat Man was deftly juggling turnips, three or four at a time. Cissie the pig was sitting about fifteen feet away, her eyes spinning to keep track of the turnips, and every so often the Fat Man would bounce a turnip off his head – just like a footballer – straight at her. The pig would snatch it from the air, crunch it once and swallow it almost whole. She had the agility of a Jack Russell or, as Troy had observed when she was a piglet, a mountain goat, climbing everywhere – Troy often thought they should have named her Hillary or Tenzing. But Cissie it had been, Cissie the Gloucester Old Spot, a breed commonly known as the Orchard Pig.
The Fat Man put another handful of turnips into the air and the pig’s neck began to twist and turn as its beady eyes followed breakfast as it spun through space.
‘I didn’t know you could do that,’ Troy said.
‘I can spin plates an’ all. And what I can do with a top hat, two pigeons and a rabbit you wouldn’t believe.’
He launched all four turnips at the pig. Snap, snap, snap, snap, and they were gone.
‘How do you think she does that?’
‘Dunno, old cock. The hand may be quicker than the eye. It certainly ain’t quicker than the pig. If I was younger I’d work up a turn and go on the halls with her.’
‘If there were any music halls left,’ Troy added.
‘O’ course, cock. Goes without sayin’. Now, what gets you up bright and late on this sunny morn?’
‘Angst,’ said Troy.
‘Ants?’
‘People … are getting at me.’
The Fat Man sat down on the bench next to Troy, opened his Thermos, handed Troy a cup of sickly-sweet instant coffee, and tucked into his sandwich. The pig’s eyes followed the to and fro between them, hopefully. Troy hated instant coffee, but he’d never risk saying no to it, and much preferred the days when the Fat Man brought tea.
‘You just tell me who, and I’ll go round with an Austin 7 startin’ ‘andle and sort ‘em out.’
‘You’re kidding?’
The Fat Man spat crumbs over Troy. ‘Course I’m kidding. It’s that Stanley, isn’t it? And it’s that young woman o’ yours, and it’s that other young woman o’ yours – your doctor? And I reckon it’s your brother too.’
‘That�
��s about the gist of it. Not my brother, oddly enough, but everybody else you just named wants me to call it a day.’
‘Resign, you mean?’
‘Retire.’
‘But . . . you’re just a boy.’
It was well meant – although Troy found it hard to take that way – and he supposed that to the Fat Man, whose age was impossible to guess, bald for years and fat almost as long, he was not much more than a boy.
‘It’s OK. I’m not going to do it. If I give in now I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering about what might have been … I’ll become a fat, sodden whinger, full of regret and self-pity like
Like who? For fuck’s sake, like who?
The pig gave up waiting for more turnips and rolled on her back squirming at an itch she could not scratch. Troy knew just how she felt.
‘. . . Like . . . like Dyadya Vanya.’
‘Daddy who?’
‘Not daddy – Dyadya. It means “uncle”. It’s Russian for “uncle”.’
‘I didn’t know you’d got an uncle Vanya. I’ve met your uncle Nikolai, but I don’t remember a Vanya.’
‘No. I haven’t got an uncle Vanya.’
‘Then why tell me you have?’
‘He’s a character in a play by Chekhov.’
‘Who’s Chekhov?’
‘Doesn’t matter. All I meant was that I’d become like Vanya – a miserable, suicidal sod incapable of blowing out his own brains or anyone else’s for that matter.’
‘You want to blow somebody’s brains out?’
‘No, of course not. That’s not what I meant.’
‘It seems to me, young Fred, that about three-quarters of what you’re saying isn’t what you mean. But this much I will say. You do what you think’s best, cock. Maybe there’ll come a time to throw in the towel. Who knows? But it’s for you to say. And, if you want my twopenn’orth, when that time comes you’ll know. Believe me, old son, you’ll know. In the meantime you get back into the thick of it and kick bum!’
‘Bum?’
‘Arse.’
‘Ah, you mean … as they say in America, “kick ass”?’