The Sound of Trumpets

by John Mortimer

  Not until the last night, that is. She was packing to leave the next day when he knocked on the door. She opened it to find him wearing a hotel dressing-grown. He came into the room in a determined manner and said, ‘I’ve been thinking over what you said about your husband.’

  ‘About him being Minister with Responsibility for Prisons?’

  ‘About him not meeting all your needs and being fully supportive.’

  ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘You said, “He’s not fully committed to the marriage.” ’

  ‘He’s busy.’

  ‘Be honest with yourself, Kate. Ask yourself the questions. Where does that leave you?’

  ‘Well, I’m busy too.’

  ‘Too busy to assess the situation fully?’

  ‘What situation?’

  ‘Terry’s “elsewhere” quality. His lack of focus on the relationship.’

  ‘I hadn’t really thought about that.’

  ‘You mean, you’re asking for space? You need time for the decision-making process? I can understand that. But have you ever faced the true facts, Kate?’

  ‘What true facts?’

  ‘You may have married Terry because you wanted a father figure.’

  ‘That’s nonsense! Terry couldn’t be my father. He couldn’t have had me when he was eleven.’

  ‘It’s been known.’ Craig became deadly serious. ‘I just want you to know, when you fully assess the situation, that I’m prepared to make a full commitment.’ At this he opened his dressing-grown and displayed a prominent, indeed formidable, erection.

  Kate observed it in silence. Then she said, ‘I’ve got to get on with my packing.’

  Craig girded up his dressing-gown, said, ‘Goodnight, then,’ and left her. No mention was made of this encounter the next day. After an early discussion group on the relationship of the work ethic to the guilt complex, they gave each other a brief, almost formal goodbye kiss in the car park and hadn’t seen each other since.

  So, when she sat down with the hen party and raised her chopsticks to the seaweed and battered prawns, she was contemplating telling the story of the full commitment when she heard a voice from behind her, no doubt the voice of Jilly Bloxham, whom she had seen sitting with Betty Wellover from the stables, saying, ‘It’s Agnes. I’m terribly worried about her.’

  There was some sort of murmur from the horse coper and then Jilly’s voice, clear as a bell to Kate’s ears, said, ‘My dear, he’s a young man. Much younger. Married too. At her age! It’s bound to end in disaster. I told Agnes. One thing you can be sure of, I told her. The young always win in the end.’

  It was only for a brief, impossible moment that Kate thought they might be talking about Terry, but she rejected the idea almost as soon as she’d had it. She ate her seaweed and listened to a story about the new headmistress of a local primary school and the man who looked after the boilers. She never said a word about the frank and fearless approach of Craig Begsby.

  June Wilbraham could take a hint, and Garth Inwood could give one with all the delicacy of Napoleon’s cavalry charging the Russians at Austerlitz. Accordingly, it became clear to her that any story published on the subject of Peter Millichip’s demise and the work done by Garth’s uncle, Linda Millichip or Slippy Johnson to smooth the transition to Willock’s candidacy would be against the political interest of her boyfriend and, indeed, the Party Chairman. June saw herself, in the fullness of time, as the local M.P.’s gracious wife, opening the village fêtes (worse than death) at which she had been used to photographing and chronicling the names of the winners of the Straightest Leek Contest or the Best Tractor-Driver’s Lunch.

  She wouldn’t, of course, publish anything which might embarrass the Inwoods. Her caution in this respect was increased when she discovered that Linda Millichip had decided to live abroad and the white, treeless spread, including the famous swimming pool, was up for sale. However, she had some time ago asked her father, as an old crime reporter, to see if he could find any trace of Slippy Johnson, expert lock-picker and son of a well-known villain.

  Pud was proud of his daughter and anxious to help in her career. He kept an attic full of cardboard boxes which contained his old press cuttings, and something about the name Johnson and safes reminded him of a case, a long case, a case with a number of defendants which he had covered for the Planet because one of them had killed a security guard, something which the older professionals on the job alleged successfully they had never intended to happen. The killer was young, inexperienced and entirely, so one of his fellow accused had said in evidence, doolally, and although only employed as a look-out man, he panicked and bonked this security guard on the head with a cosh no one knew he was carrying. The safe-breakers had been lucky to get away with five years for a burglary without violence, and Pud, eating baked beans on toast and drinking Guinness in front of the television, a lonely widower since June’s mother’s death, tried to remember the name of the case.

  He had been watching ‘Brookside’, and the name jogged his memory. Brookfield? Brooklands? Brook Green? Then he remembered and climbed to the attic where his boxes of cuttings were in alphabetical order and rediscovered all he’d written about the Snaresbrook Supermarket Slaughter. The story of the month-long trial was written for the Planet with, he was not afraid to tell himself, enormous punch, skill and a relentless sense of drama. He was then reminded that the expert in charge of the safe was always referred to as ‘Peters’ Johnson and the pub where the deal was struck and the job planned had been the Jolly Roger on Tooting Broadway.

  Pud’s route to Tooting led him past Wandsworth Prison, where so many of the subjects he wrote about, even after he became Mr Tittle-Tattle, had ended up. The Jolly Roger had changed considerably over the last fifteen years. It would no longer be possible to plan a decent robbery there because the conspirators could never, over the blare of heavy rock, the squeaks of Space Invaders and the clatter of fruit machines, hear each other speak. He’d downed a half of Guinness and asked the twenty-year-old barman with a glittering waistcoat if he ever had Peters Johnson in there now, a question which received a blank stare and a quick shake of spiked hair before the boy moved away to help a gaggle of girls on an office outing. Pud was about to leave when a large, bald man smoking a cigar and drinking a very small brandy said, ‘Peters don’t come in here since it’s been modernized. Most nights he gets in the Queen of Sheba, round Nutwell Street.’

  The Queen of Sheba was unexpectedly small, old-fashioned, shabbily furnished and deathly quiet. A small, restless man in his fifties was perched like a nervous bird on a bar stool, turning the pages of the Evening Standard backwards and forwards as though in the hope of finding some small piece of comforting news. He looked up when a faded card with the legend ‘Percival Wilbraham, the Daily Planet’ was plonked down on the Londoners’ Diary. ‘Peters,’ a voice said, ‘I always liked the way you walked from the murder charge in the Snaresbrook Supermarket job. Can I, as an old crime reporter, have the honour of buying you a drink?’

  Both men seemed in need of company, and their meeting was friendly. They had smiled at each other over crowded courtrooms, or when brief statements were made after a successful appeal, and Pud behaved like a drama critic, meeting for the first time a star whom he had always admired from afar. After three or four more drinks and a good half-hour Pud said he’d come with a message for young Slippy.

  Peters took a gulp of Newcastle Brown and said, ‘You’re not asking me to grass on Slippy?’

  ‘God forbid! It’s for his own good, Peters. An important journalist, writes only for class papers, just wants a brief interview. She’d be willing to pay for it.’

  ‘He’s had bad luck, that boy. His mother took it into her head to live with Mad Mike Manfred while I was away. Mad Mike did something terrible to him and got twelve years for it. But my Slippy don’t forget easily.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s the reason, if you wanted to know, why it’s uncomfortable
for Slip to have water on his body.’

  ‘It’s nothing about that,’ Pud assured him. ‘This particular classy journalist will talk to him clean, or talk to him dirty. I do assure you it won’t make a scrap of difference.’

  ‘You don’t want to know where he kips down, like, at present?’

  ‘That’s not necessary. This journalist will just fix an interview at the place of your son’s choice.’

  Peters thought it over, spread his long fingers on the bar and tapped it gently, as though in search of a safe to open. ‘What’s the subject exactly?’

  ‘Young people in trouble.’

  ‘Slip won’t want to tell what he’s doing. Or about his time in the nick neither. And he won’t divulge his present address.’

  ‘She just wants to know something about how he helped someone out.’

  ‘Helped who out?’

  ‘Some woman. Her husband was an M.P. He helped out after her old man died.’

  ‘I’ll ask the boy. What he’s prepared to divulge.’

  ‘You do that, Peters. And let me fill you up.’ They stayed together for a while, and a sum of money changed hands. Pud owed his daughter a birthday present and thought he could buy her nothing more precious than information. Peters thanked him and said, ‘My boy must be popular. There was someone else asking for him.’

  ‘Oh, really. Who?’

  ‘I don’t know. Some lad he was in the nick with seemingly. He said would I mention the name “Rosalind” to Slippy. That puzzled me because it was certainly a young bloke speaking.’

  ‘Well, I’d better be getting along.’ Pud drained his glass. His journalist’s curiosity was, however, not quite satisfied. ‘By the way. What did you say Mad Mike did to your lad?’

  ‘The crazy bastard.’ Peters had grown more confiding as the drinks filled his small, restless body. ‘When Slippy was just five Mike says he hates the little bugger for taking too much of my wife’s attention. He only puts him in a sack and drops him in the river round Erith! He drove him all that way on purpose. Bit of luck some chap see it happen and fished the boy out. That’s when Mike got twelve years. Attempted murder. And why my boy don’t care to wash much ever since. Thanks for the drinks. I’ll let you know our Slippy’s decision.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  One of the most obvious changes brought about by the Labour victory in Hartscombe was that the Barbarians’ dinner was now a black-tie affair.

  Bishop Roger was the leader of the movement for change. He had felt guilty, although it was by no means his fault, because Terry had been embarrassed and overdressed at his first dinner; so, with the old-fashioned courtesy with which Queen Victoria is said to have drunk the water in her finger-bowl when the Siamese ambassador did so, the Barbarians followed suit. The men were in dinner-jackets, asserting their individuality with coloured velvet dicky-bows or ornate waistcoats, and their good ladies came in long dresses, the best jewellery, and cashmere shawls if they were old and chilly.

  Kate had drawn the line at the dinner, saying that Terry having twice won the seat, she no longer felt bound to put up with old farts who ignored her and got her name wrong. He told her that it was his duty to go, however much he hated it, and in order that he would be able to anaesthetize the occasion by drinking, he’d stay with Penry rather than drive home. When he told Kate this she gave him a look he thought he had never seen on her face before, doubtful, inquiring and far short of approval. He worried about it for a moment but then put it down to her natural dislike of well-heeled countryfolk in the full soup and fish.

  Garth Inwood was there with his girlfriend June, who, popping out of a skin-tight black frock, was extremely popular with the penguins. Sir Gregory was also there and introduced him to Terry. ‘My sister Angela’s son. They live at Nunn’s Courtny, you know. He’s the chap who’s hoping to fight you at the next election.’

  ‘I wish you luck.’ Terry shook Garth’s hand and was glad to talk to June of the Sentinel. She said she’d be calling on him soon to do the interview he’d promised, and he assured her that she could do it in any depth she liked and that he was looking forward to it keenly. Titmuss loomed up between them and, striking Terry on the shoulder, said, ‘Congratulations, lad! Prisons may be the bottom rung, but at least you’re on the end of the ladder and it’s not so completely humiliating as being Minister for the Arts. Come on. Let me buy you a drink. Or are you driving home?’

  ‘No, I’m staying the night,’ and Terry added, ‘with my agent.’

  ‘Are you indeed?’ Titmuss was in an unusually jovial mood. ‘How very sensible!’

  ‘Might I have a word?’ Kenny Iremonger took the seat next to Terry which Betty Wellover had just vacated after dinner. ‘I had the pleasure of interviewing you on the old “Breakfast Egg”, if you remember?’

  ‘Of course I do.’ Terry had much of the evening still to enjoy and was in a pleasant and forgiving mood.

  ‘I was a big fish in a very small puddle on Radio Worsfield,’ Kenny had to admit. ‘Now I’ve been head-hunted by the B.B.C. and I’m on the box.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Kenny leant forward as though to discuss some closely kept secret, ‘I’ve been asked to do a programme called “Confrontations”. Well-known people from opposing parties in discussion, and our hope is’ – Kenny grinned cheerfully – ‘that the sparks will fly! Now, as you’re one of the rising stars of the Labour Party …’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ Terry, who privately found nothing inaccurate about this description, did his best to sound modest.

  ‘The powers that be would very much like you to be in the first programme. We go out live, which is rather exciting. We’ll try and find you some worthy Tory opponent, although of course they’re a bit thin on the ground just at the moment. Can I tell my masters you’ll think it over?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll do it.’ Terry had no doubts. ‘You may tell the B.B.C. I’ll certainly do it.’ With a prime interview set up and a chance to shine on television, Terry felt elated. He was stepping, he felt, up Titmuss’s ladder and would soon be leaving Prisons, not to say Arts, far below.

  ‘Well, that’s enormously generous,’ Kenny told him. ‘They’ll be thrilled. And I’ll fix an early date.’

  With so much publicity under his belt Terry thought the dinner had little left to offer. He said good-night to Bishop Roger, ‘in the chair’ for that Barbarians’ evening, and made for the door, where he was delayed by a familiar rasping voice. ‘Going so early?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. Lots of work to do in the morning.’

  ‘Yes, of course. The cares of government! How glad I am to have escaped them. Is there a crisis, then, in Prisons?’

  ‘There’s always a crisis in Prisons.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I suppose so. Well, off you go then. And get a good night’s sleep.’

  So Terry left and drove, through the empty streets of Hartscombe, not to Penry’s house but to the one that had once been a doctor’s surgery, with its windows looking out on to the dark river. He was in too high a mood to notice the ex-government Rover which followed him across the bridge and parked tactfully round a corner as Terry was let into Agnes’s house.

  Later Lord Titmuss stood beside his housekeeper Mrs Ragg as, at his request, she made a telephone call to London.

  It was just before dawn. The dicky-bow and the pleated shirt, the black shiny-lapelled jacket and patent-leather shoes, bought now and not hired, were tumbled in an armchair with Agnes’s jeans, her shirt, sweater and white knickers. She lay on the bed, on her side, her folded hand under her cheek, her eyes open and smiling. Terry, apparently less contented, sat upright beside her. Their lovemaking had been satisfactory, as usual, and had lived up to his imaginings during the long tedium of the Barbarians’ dinner. But there was something else he thought was due to him, something he was no longer prepared to forgo now he had been offered fame to go with his success as a Junior Minister.

  ‘You don’t,’ he
said in a voice of quiet accusation, ‘take me seriously at all. Do you?’

  ‘Anyone who can make love like that,’ Agnes said sleepily, as though the question were in itself a bit of a joke, ‘has to be taken extremely seriously.’

  ‘Even lovemaking from a shit.’

  ‘Particularly lovemaking from a shit.’

  ‘You think I’ve failed in politics.’

  ‘I think you shouldn’t worry your pretty head about that.’

  At this Terry shot out of bed as though bitten, in the comfort of its sheets, by some small vicious animal. He was naked, but making his way rapidly towards his clothes. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘you’re patronizing!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She sat up, searching for a cigarette. ‘I’m just loving you for what you are.’

  ‘What I am!’ He was on one leg, pulling on boxer shorts. From then on he spoke with passion while getting dressed. ‘I’m someone who set out to get a job and I’m doing it to the best of my ability. Trying to make things a little less bad for our people. Doing the things you care about. But you don’t do anything, do you? Only talk. What do you think you are?’

  He was surprised by his anger, which once allowed to trickle, rapidly became a flood. It was fed by her constant smile, her sitting up, bare-breasted, lighting a cigarette, waving out the match as though nothing serious was happening at all.