Play Dead

by Peter Dickinson

  ‘She sounds absolutely marvellous.’

  ‘You remind me a little of her.’

  ‘Oh. I’m afraid I’m not like that.’

  ‘No? Then perhaps it is only that she lived in a basement with a giant cat.’

  Poppy laughed and he watched her.

  ‘And her laughter, like yours, said yes to the world,’ he said.

  ‘Does it? I suppose it does, in spite of everything. I’m afraid I don’t pay as much attention to the world as I ought to—I seem to have shrunk into myself, somehow.’

  ‘You don’t need a state apparatus to achieve repression. Perhaps you have made your husband into a Stalin, and you are now in your Brezhnev era.’

  ‘Oh, I hope not! Is Natalie still alive?’

  ‘She died eighteen months ago, still in her basement. She’d had a stroke four years earlier which left her speechless, though when I visited her I was able to persuade myself that she knew who I was. And I was able to see that she was cared for to the end.’

  ‘You didn’t bring her back to England?’

  ‘The authorities wouldn’t permit it. They had their reasons. Even in a country like Romania there are some things money can’t buy. And besides, she would have refused to come while she still had the understanding to choose. She was a Marxist, of the sort they are now trying to tell us were the norm before Stalin. She wasn’t an active dissident. Her nature was to be, rather than to do. Her faith was in the people. One day, she used to say, they will find their voice, and then nothing will stop them. She believed that the Revolution had not been perverted, but that it had never come. She would often when things were bad quote Gramsci—pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will. And the West would have had no attraction for her at all. Here’s our food, at last.’

  Certainly he knew how to operate systems. The restaurant was part of a chain, with identical decor, identical menus, all prescribed by HQ. Tepid milk didn’t figure in HQ’s concept of the pizza paradise; there was no price for it, no way of recording it at the till, but he had asked for it and it came. He ate, as before, in silence.

  While she was sipping her coffee she said, ‘What happened about your pig system, after you left?’

  ‘What you would expect. The Securitate moved in and took it over. They charged higher prices for worse meat and at the same time flooded the market in their greed. The market collapsed, so they arrested a few people at random and had them shot for corruption, and the system reverted to what it had been before I came, but worse. That has been the history of Romania over forty years. It is difficult to convey the feel of such a society, the effect of more than a generation of inefficiency, corruption and brutal but aimless totalitarianism.’

  ‘But you still have dealings with them? You got Natalie looked after.’

  ‘I am useful to them. Without channels to the West, official and unofficial, President Ceausescu’s cousins would not be able to buy their Gucci shoes.’

  ‘Do they trust you?’

  ‘Of course not. Shall we go?’

  They came out into a warmish drizzle. He took a collapsible umbrella from his briefcase, snapped it open and held it over her. She put her arm in his while she peered this way and that, trying to get her bearings so that she could walk to the Tube station. The neon of the shops and the lights of passing cars glistened off the wet tarmac, sheeny-slick with road oil after the long drought. She felt quite lost. London was her warren, her context, but she couldn’t for the moment locate this road into it. It must run north from the City, but was she on the east side, or the west? She could have been anywhere, in any city in the world, isolated under the shelter of his brolly.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said. ‘I’d like to come home with you.’

  ‘I thought …’

  ‘My appointment’s not until after midnight.’

  He was looking at her, his eyes mere gleams in the dimness. Unlike his earlier challenge, this time his voice seemed to be telling her she could say no and still not alter their friendship. This wasn’t anything she’d expected, or hoped for, or imagined she’d wanted, but her feelings about it, about him, about herself, seemed unfocused, the blur of the world without her spectacles. In those large general terms, where anything more than a couple of feet away becomes mere bulk and hue and only what is almost on your nose has shape, she knew what she wanted, now.

  ‘All right,’ she said.

  His wrist-watch snickered its alarm. He was asleep, she was not. He didn’t stir to the sound, so she stroked his shoulder-blade to wake him. He had a very solid-seeming body, meaty muscles, big bones.

  ‘Your alarm’s gone,’ she said.

  ‘I heard it. Put some milk on, please.’

  She rose and groped her way to the kitchen. From force of habit, as if it had been her normal rising time of half-past-seven, she turned the radio on. It was The Trojans, final act, live from Covent Garden, she guessed. She wondered if Derek was there. The Dido had a voice, all right, but she didn’t recognise who it was. He liked them good and plump.

  Mr Capstone, as she still thought of him, came in buttoning a shirt-cuff.

  ‘That’s where my man is,’ he said.

  ‘He was lucky to get tickets.’

  ‘No trouble. He’s on a trade delegation.’

  ‘I wonder if he has any idea where you are.’

  He took the question seriously.

  ‘Probably not. But if I call you at any time, will you be careful what you say?’

  ‘Heavens. Yes, of course, if it’s like that.’

  He drank his milk in silence. She wondered whether he was going to say anything. He had his mask firmly in place. She had no idea of his feelings beyond a sense that the past two hours had been for him time out, a space, an island of escape from the treacherous pressures against which he’d erected his defences. Raining though it was, he had paid off the taxi several streets away and made her walk home ahead. It was like that, and for the moment she fulfilled a need, someone who was no threat to him at all, chance-met, with a laugh like Natalie’s. Perhaps in his mind he had been making love as much to Natalie as to her. It didn’t matter, in fact it meant she need have no bad conscience at all about his being a married man with a child. This was part of a different life.

  Elias came in from one of his night prowls neatly flicking his tail clear of the closing cat-flap. His fur was seed-pearled with the drizzle. She picked him up and held him against her, letting his purr throb through her body. Mr Capstone looked at the pair of them and smiled. She smiled back.

  ‘What colour was Natalie’s cat?’ she said.

  ‘Ginger. My next free evening is Thursday.’

  ‘Oh. I’ve got to go to Janet’s adoption meeting—he needs every vote she can get. It should be over by half-past nine.’

  ‘May I come round at ten?’

  ‘That would be nice. Would you like something to eat?’

  ‘A snack. I must go.’

  ‘Is your phone really tapped?’

  ‘Probably. I have to assume so.’

  ‘And are they watching you?’

  ‘Some of the time.’

  ‘Your chauffeur, Constantin, is he a Romanian?’

  ‘Why do you ask?

  ‘He feels like a policeman, somehow.’

  ‘Very likely. Don’t worry. It’ll happen any time now. In a few more weeks all that will be over.’

  Next morning, while Poppy was in the bath, the telephone rang. She reached the instrument, dripping. A voice, muffled, but probably female she later decided, said, ‘What’s it feel like to know your lover’s a murderer?’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘What’s it feel like to know your lover’s a murderer?’

  ‘Who is that?’

  But the caller had rung off.

  2

 
Thursday was a dry night, with a chilly, gusty wind which made standing around waiting for the doors to open thoroughly unpleasant. Poppy told herself that it was necessary for the sake of democracy, but the edge was taken off her sense of virtue because earlier she’d been watching the news and seen shots of a demonstration in East Germany, immense, unanimous, disciplined, excited masses of people cramming a square and the surrounding thoroughfares, a primal force like the pressure of oceans, such as John Capstone had talked about in the pizza restaurant. She looked round at the forty or fifty citizens waiting with her on the pavement and tried to imagine them being stirred to a similar joint passion. None of them looked like a breaker of nations.

  None of them looked as if they had a lover to go home to either, but nor, no doubt, did she.

  ‘Membership cards,’ a voice bawled. ‘Please have membership cards ready.’

  The doors of the church hall had opened. The crowd, larger now, jostled towards the lit rectangle. ‘It only seats a hundred and twenty,’ Janet had said. ‘Don’t be late.’ The stewards at the door were checking every card, slowing the in-flow. Pressures behind built up, quite unnecessarily as there was still plenty of time, but groups of people as if for the fun of it were forming wedges and trying to barge their way in towards the door between others like Poppy who had been waiting longer. She found herself shoved sideways into the back of a woman with a sleepy child on her shoulder, almost knocking her over. The child, startled, looked up and Poppy at once recognised the large-eyed, dark face under the peaked blue hood.

  ‘Hello, Nelson,’ she said. ‘It’s all right. It’s only me.’

  Nell twisted her head with a brief ‘Hi’ as he snuggled back into her shoulder, then turned away again. Poppy managed to follow her closely through the door because an altercation between some would-be voters and the steward on the other side had slowed the stream to single file.

  ‘Shall we sit together?’ she said. ‘Or do you want to be with your friends?’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Nell, not very welcomingly. Poppy hadn’t seen her in the week and a half since the meeting at Linen Walk, and had been worrying at times about her. With the play centre still out of action the Nafia had fragmented, small groups meeting in different houses and either arranging then and there for next time or using the telephone. Nell hadn’t come, and had left no number, but she could easily have made contact if she’d wanted.

  They found seats near the end of a row about half-way down the hall. Nell didn’t sit at once; she stood looking round as if for people she knew, but gave no smiles or waves of recognition.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Poppy when at last she settled. ‘I see they manage to close the commune down last week. You hadn’t gone back, though, had you? I hope you’ve found somewhere nice to live.’

  ‘We’re fine,’ said Nell, not answering the rest of the question. ‘How’s Elias?’

  ‘Large and lazy and moulting everywhere. You must bring Nelson to see him.’

  ‘He’d like that. Have you been a member long?’

  She was too honest at heart, Poppy thought, to make the question ring natural.

  ‘About fifteen months,’ she said. ‘I used to vote Liberal, but they made such asses of themselves after the last election that I lost patience.’

  ‘Most people wouldn’t bother to join.’

  ‘I didn’t want to have to vote for someone I hadn’t helped choose.’

  Poppy had had that admirable sentiment ready, in case she was asked, and though it was partly true she disliked herself for bringing it out for Nell. Nell looked almost pityingly at her and adjusted Nelson down on to her lap. He had fallen asleep now, in that impervious stupor so expressive of the needs and vulnerabilities of childhood. This time Poppy spoke without thought.

  ‘I love to see you with him,’ she said.

  Nell glanced at her again, more sharply.

  ‘Don’t,’ she muttered. ‘It’s different.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  They fell silent, awkward with the constraint of thought between them, and the conspiracy of feeling. Was it possible, Poppy wondered, that any creed, any bunch of fellow-believers, could be so austere in their fanaticism that they should want to take even this away if they understood it was there? Wasn’t it the touchstone of any programme that this should be among its chief aims, in some form, for everyone, the possibility of personal love? She liked to think well of people, to believe that most of those she disagreed with had good, if mistaken, motives. Indeed, knowing the half-heartedness of most of her own impulses, she tended to be cynical about the moral honesty of middle-of-the-roaders like herself, and to envy the braying certainties of those on the wings.

  Almost all the seats were full now but people were still crowding in. The candidates and officials took their places behind a trestle table on a platform at the end of the room, Janet at the extreme left of the row. In the past few weeks Poppy had been dutifully reading the Ethelden Echo so that she could keep up to date with the party in-fighting, so she recognised some of the faces. Trevor Evans, the left-wing candidate, a large shambling man with a long nose and neatly trimmed beard, sat one away from Janet, so between them must be Bob Stavoli, a pinkly bouncy middle-aged man in a blue suit.

  Of the three it was Janet who caught and held the eye. She wasn’t wearing her usual outfit of polo-neck and jeans, but a dark grey trouser suit, a white blouse with a floppy red bow at the neck and, of all things, a pair of dangling gold earrings. The Labour Party had held a seminar for women would-be candidates, and apparently this was the recommended style for getting men to take you seriously. Janet and Poppy had worked themselves into near hysterics trying out variations in front of the mirror at home, while Toby had stumped around like a disgruntled putto in The Robing of Minerva, trying to persuade his mother to put on recognisable clothes again. Now, of course, she wore the result with total confidence. Even the lipstick and eye-shadow looked right.

  Next to Evans was a stranger, a youngish-looking Asian, and then the chairman, Alasdair Meakin, stooped, anxious, with a kneaded, deep-lined face but beautiful white hair combed into sculpted waves and jelled into place. Then, presumably, the rest of the executive committee, most recognisably a fat disorganised-looking woman in a caftan. Lucy something, according to the Echo the mouthpiece of Militant on the committee.

  ‘Trish says it’s going to be all right,’ Janet had said. ‘The local party’s been pretty thoroughly Kinnockised, apart from Trevor and Lucy, and Walworth Road’s determined to have someone who can stand up to Capstone. Bob’s on the short list to keep the gays happy—he’ll get a few of the ballot votes but nothing from the unions. I’ll be second choice on most of those. Trish thinks she’s got most of the union votes sewn up for me, so if I do well enough tonight I might just about get in on the first count. It’s lucky Trevor’s such a shit, such an obvious rat.’

  ‘Why does anyone vote for him at all?’

  ‘Don’t be naïve, Poppy.’

  ‘Will there be any public rows? I shan’t enjoy that.’

  ‘Nothing serious. They’ve all been in the committee. But I’d better warn you there’s bound to be a tedious ritual at the beginning when the left try to hold things up by challenging people’s right to vote. The idea is that the good old sober citizens who’ve come along out of a sense of duty will get bored and bewildered and disgusted enough to go home, leaving the hard core to vote Trevor in. It used to work, sometimes, but we’re ready for it now. Your job is to stick it out. Just remember, you might be the one who makes my 51 per cent.’

  ‘For your sake, darling.’

  And sure enough, no sooner had Mr Meakin banged his gavel enough to produce a shuffling kind of silence than a young woman was on her feet near the front of the hall. Poppy felt Nell stir beside her.

  ‘Point of order,’ called the woman.

  ‘No points of order while th
e chair is speaking,’ said Mr Meakin in a calmly weary voice, signalling his confidence in his procedural rectitude. ‘Will you please stay in your places while the stewards check numbers present against those registered as having come in with valid credentials. The register will be available for scrutiny at the back of the hall after the counting is complete. I will then accept points of order. All challenges of rights to vote will be taken at that point and none thereafter. Now the purpose of this meeting …’

  He explained the procedure in the driest possible tones, and the counting followed, very thorough, two stewards checking each row separately and confirming their count with each other. Poppy gazed around. The room was a parish hall, apparently used at times for some kind of school activity. Children’s paintings on the theme of St George and the dragon had been Blu-tacked to the walls. Close enough for her to study in detail was one of a charmingly pudgy princess lashed to a palm-tree and weeping immense tears on to her ballooning breasts while a tiny knight and dragon battled it out in the distance. It’s all a matter of perspective, she thought. Standpoint. John Capstone—but for this meeting she would have been with him now, watching him finish his tepid milk, perhaps, and feeling pleased that she’d managed to supply him with that odd little satisfaction. His presence, the prospect of soon undressing and lying naked beside him in her candle-lit bedroom and feeling his hard, deliberate hands moving over her body, would then have filled her whole mindscape. As it was, he had become a figure in the middle distance, moving away and dwindling as the activities in the hall more and more filled her foreground. All the questions about him—whether she loved, or liked, or trusted him; what his feelings might be for her, and for his wife and daughter; what shape the hidden parts of his life might take, so sinisterly signalled by his prevarications over whether he had been followed, and then by the shock of that first anonymous telephone call. (There’d been two more, but at least she’d been partly ready for them. The first one, though, how had they known he was there? And if they had been right about that, did the rest of the message represent a truth? And should she tell him? Before, or after?). All these were for the moment curiosities, vaguely seen at the edges of her perception. As she walked home to wait for him they would begin to loom again. Meanwhile the foreground was filled with this event, so deliberately boring that it acquired a sort of fascination.