The Partridge Kite
Page 28
Privately, sensible people did not see it as a victory. Inside that very tight small grouping of people who actually govern this country, the shortlist of the elite, there was a shared feeling of incompleteness. A feeling that only the really big fish had been netted and across the nation there were still thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of people still waiting for the signal. Most certainly there was left at the end of it all the suspicion that although the brain had been destroyed the eager body had not.
Within the next few months, many men and women in middle and high places in Government, the Services, Police, Commerce and Industry, would suddenly decide to retire early and forgo their pensions. Others would not be given the option but be told to gather together what they could and leave for South America.
The six themselves, once their co-operation had been utilised, were given an ultimatum. Not the threat of trial or imprisonment, nothing as public as that. And without exception they accepted.
It would be quite some time before the British people were informed by the British Press of the departure of such eminent people. For their emigration was discreet and well-spaced, and their own separate explanations of ‘exorbitant taxation’, ‘the debilitation of our moral attitudes’, ‘the curse of incumbent Socialism’, or simply ‘retirement in the sun’ seemed to satisfy what was only a slightly curious public anyway.
The explanation given by Anthony Mostyn and his two brothers, that they were leaving ‘a land of lost opportunities’, gave Tom and Fry, who was now convalescing with his mother in Farnham, the only touch of humour in the whole affair.
Kate, as irony would have it, was transferred to Sweden. Not to the fictitious Trygg-Ö-Säker in Malmö or through any vindictiveness on the part of Military Intelligence. It was simply a post recently vacated that needed to be filled and she, according to Personnel, was the next in line for promotion and the extra $280 a year that went with it.
She did not say goodbye; it seemed absurd to do so. They had said it so many times before and always so finally.
Tom received notification from his bank that a credit of ten thousand pounds had been paid into his current account the previous morning.
He sat on his bed in Marks and Spencer briefs and reached out again for the bottle of whisky. It was after all five-thirty p.m. and there was one good reason why he should be drinking the Old Year out.
He pulled the fan heater closer to the bed and began flipping through brochures advertising package holidays on Greek Islands. But somehow the cheaply printed, out-of-register photographs didn’t seem as attractive as they might
He poured more whisky into the tumbler, a large one, and swallowed it in one gulp, then leant forward and tugged at the lead of the portable television that was nestling among the blankets on his bed.
The early evening ITN news reported the Prime Minister’s visit to the Seychelles, recuperating from his attack of coronary thrombosis. An anonymous head in the studio rambled incoherently on about the possibility of an early election.
Violence continued in the West Indies, and the British Leyland sit-in was in its fifth week. The pound sterling was rallying to a cent above parity with the US dollar, the new President of Zimbabwe, the fifth in as many military coups, had ordered all remaining whites out of the country, and King Idi Amin Dada of the recently announced Kingdom of Uganda had offered a squadron of Royal Migs to encourage them on their way.
But Tom heard nothing more. He had fallen into a drunken sleep. His chin hit his chest and he began to breathe noisily through his mouth.
An advertisement for a well-known detergent powder proudly boasted its new improved formula, the thirtieth such improvement in its marketing history. The tumbler resting on Tom’s chest tipped over, whisky drenched the pictures of Greek villas, and dripped on to the lino on the floor.
It was New Year’s Eve and Tom had done exactly what he’d promised himself he would do.
If he couldn’t spend it in company he’d make certain he wouldn’t know he’d spent it alone.
About the author
Michael Nicholson is one of the world’s most travelled and most decorated television foreign correspondents. He has braved 18 war zones over the past 40 years, picking up a host of awards. Michael is a familiar face in Britain’s homes as a former anchor of ITV’s Evening News and a correspondent for long-running current affairs series Tonight.
He has won numerous British and international awards for his reports – from Biafra, Cyprus and Vietnam – and has twice been named the Royal Television Society Journalist of the Year. For his coverage of the Falklands War he was given the prestigious Richard Dimbleby Award by BAFTA. In 1991, Michael was awarded the OBE for his reporting of the Gulf War.
His books include The Partridge Kite, Red Joker, December Ultimatum, Pilgrims Rest, Across the Limpopo and his memoir A Measure of Danger. His book Natasha’s Story, the gripping account of how he bought an orphan from war-torn Bosnia home to the UK, was made into the Hollywood film Welcome to Sarajevo in 1997.
PUBLISHING INFORMATION
PUBLISHED BY APOSTROPHE BOOKS LTD
www.apostrophebooks.com
ISBN: 9781910167656
First published Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1978.
Digital edition produced in 2014 by Apostrophe Books Ltd.
Copyright © Michael Nicholson 1978.
Michael Nicholson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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Cover image: public domain illustration.
Cover design by Jamie Downham.