——
“Tell me one thing before you incinerate me, Hutch.”
“Mmm? What’s that?”
“Why give me the fake files on Operation Crystal Clear in the first place? Why ask me to investigate your own conspiracy?”
He had the gall to laugh.
“Oh, I chose you very carefully, Upshott. Who else in the Services has a past like yours? Quite the little thief, weren’t you? Plenty to work with should things turn nasty.”
He strolled up to the distillery and gazed into its churning, brown guts.
“At first, you were simply keeping an eye on Reginald for me. But then . . you began to do rather well. Unexpectedly well. The slide and the barge . .” he turned around. “Jolly good show, Upshott.”
“Come off it, Hutch,” I wasn’t having any, “you sent men on bikes to shoot me well before any of that!”
“Me? No, that was Reginald, dear chap. I’m afraid he did have to be let off the leash every now and again. Reginald kept some truly dreadful company. Gangland types and so on.” He gave a little shudder. “I wouldn’t have bothered with all that . . not then. You were just a barometer, you see, nothing more; there to show me how I was doing. As I say . .” he came up very close and peered at me, “I’m really rather delighted you’ve done so well. I mean, I always had you down as a bloody bad spy, Upshott. Never dreamed you’d get this far in the story.”
“That really is how you see it, isn’t it?” I marvelled. “It’s just another story to you, Hutch, isn’t it? Another day, another plot.”
“I beg your pardon,” came a female voice. “I think you’ll find the plots are mine, actually.”
My secretary, Dilys Arkonnen, stepped into the chamber wearing a plastic rain-hood. She glanced down at her white cardigan, irritably and brushed a few flakes of desiccated seaweed from it.
“Well,” she asked. “Is it done?”
“Oh yes,” he replied. “Done to a turn. If you like cinders.”
“Oh, Godfrey,” she said, “you are a caution!” Then, “Let me do this one, dear. Please!”
When an inhuman, ear-shattering, cry screamed out from above, like a war-cry from the depths of history. It was so terrifying that we all jumped and the shadows dropped my arms to aim their guns. A small figure swung himself across the ceiling, grasping the racks of seaweed, hand over hand. He paused above the distillery to pour something into the glass chimney, before he swung back, and began to climb down the wall.
A staccato volley of bullets spat into the air.
“Stop!” Cried the Monk. “Don’t hit the distillery!”
I seized my moment, backing away while they were occupied, aiming for the entrance that I knew was concealed beneath the seaweed. However Hutch clocked me trying to escape and started to shout:
“Don’t let him . .” he began, before a sinister, sizzling noise caught his attention and he stopped, mouth hanging open in surprise.
The sinister, sizzling noise caught the attention of all of us. It was coming from inside the great apparatus. Where there had only been brown, churning sludge, bubbles of molten gold had begun to collect, perfect spheres of brilliance bouncing through the gloom. It looked like every alchemist’s fantasy. They jostled with one another, multiplying fast, gleaming bubbles the size of footballs bobbing against one another in the race to mount the glass tower. The distillery had become an alembic, and we were hypnotized, to a man, by those orbs of the purest, most dazzling, gold that rose up the long funnel of the glass tower, so close to the lip of the chimney that they were almost . . .
Jay Tamang swung over the up-turned heads of the shadows and grabbed my arm.
“Out!” He screamed.
‘Boom!’
The distillery exploded, vomiting red-hot, fetid intestines into the chamber. Jay and I were practically through the entrance to the cave, but it must have hit the others, full blast, in the face. All screams are fearful, but, once heard, screams of agony are the hardest to forget; they last longer than anyone would think possible and then they follow you into your dreams.
But it was a mere heartbeat, two at most, and then:
‘Boom!’
The second explosion came, strong enough to rip the cliff from the earth’s core and sound from the ear. If there was screaming, nobody heard it but the sea.
Even as we raced through the operations room, the cave began to implode around us; chunks of cliff tore off the walls and scudded across the ground, spitting chalk. We were still running towards the lift shaft when the sea surged in to reclaim the cave. The waters rushed in so fast that waves crashed ten feet high against the walls before the initial trickle of moisture had dampened our shoes. In they crashed, roaring like hooligans, and, as they came, they caught up the rocks and flung them at us, rock against man and, then, man against rock as we were lifted clear off the ground and swirled around the cave, like ice cubes in a glass.
I know I was on the verge of blacking out when the sea took a breath, sucking back the tide, and Jay and I made one, final, simultaneous, surge of our own, kicking out towards the lift shaft and swimming in, our heads completely submerged. Jay Tamang’s black eyes were wide open under the water and his hair waved around his face. I pointed upwards to the broken grille on the roof and pushed off, breaking through the surface of the water as I propelled myself through the top of the lift. Thank God, the water had yet to rise further up the shaft. I clung to the rope and looked down, watching Jay emerge beneath me, gulping his fill of fresh air.
“You alright to climb, Jay?”
He looked up at me and nodded.
So we set off, shinning up the rope with the sea snapping at our heels. But, when we emerged, it was as if the sea had got there before us, for waves seemed to hurtle over our heads and the gale roared, wilder than ever. We bent into the wind, half-blind, feeling our way forward, until:
“Boom!”
The final explosion and a tremendous fireball burgeoned into the sky, washing the clifftop with such an intensity of light that we seemed to see the world through amber: the empty yellow field churned into yellow mud and the final, yellow, caravan - pulled by an old, yellow, Crossley - bumping through the gate and out to safety.
30. The Same Stars
The sun had slipped down into the arms of the English Channel and the white moon had risen and only the scattered leaves of holm oaks, ragged amongst the shingle, gave the storm away. I went to pull the fat folds of the black velvet curtains.
“Don’t,” said my mother. “Look at the stars.”
The stars over the sea were swimming through our dining-room window to join the stars that she had painted on the ceiling.
“They bring to mind the stars above the Las Wolski Forest,” said Mr Piotrowski.
“Above the mountains of Nepal,” said Jay.
“Over the chip shops of Hull,” said Magnus.
We all laughed.
“The same stars, I daresay,” said Uncle Tristram. “Although it can be hard to believe.”
“Ta da!” Boomed my father, by way of introducing the enormous side of beef that he was bringing to table.
Mrs Dyminge followed with the vegetables. I eyed the platter, uneasily, before helping myself to roast potatoes.
“Hey!” Went my little brother. “Rosa’s taking all the potatoes again!”
“She could do with them, Sam,” said Magnus, from the chaise longue that my mother had pulled up to the table and positioned next to her chair so that she could serve him his meal. “She put in a heck of a lot of work last night.”
“Yes, she is extremely brave,” agreed Jay.
I may have smirked. I certainly stuck my tongue out at my brother when the others weren’t looking.
“Hey!” Went Sam, again.
“Hey, yourself!” I replied. “How’s your shoulder, Uncle Tristram?”
“Just a graze, Gypsy; nothing to worry about.”
He barely gave me a second glance, he was so busy giving first glances t
o Aunt Kathleen. They looked like two film stars who’d unexpectedly alighted at our table; pushing their food around unconvincingly while they waited to light up another cigarette and gaze at each other through the smoke. I sighed and ate another potato.
“My goodness but this is divine, Jerzy,” exclaimed Mrs Dyminge. “I feel quite the fraud, I must say; being invited to your special Shabbat dinner when all I contributed was a little babysitting.” She speared a carrot and looked pensive. “Tell me again, dear Mr Tamang,” she turned to Jay, “just why uranium reacts so when water is added to it?”
“Ah, well, Mrs Dyminge . .” he put down his knife and fork, “ . . uranium as a dust is highly combustible.” She nodded, clearly taking mental notes for her next book. “It will ignite almost instantaneously, generating hydrogen, of course. Yes, the application of water to the molten chemical - in the dust form - will intensify the burning to a point where a severe explosion will be caused. An explosion which may only be extinguished by substantial amounts of dry sand, or limestone which, happily, were both present . .”
“Because, if they hadn’t been,” Uncle Tristram interjected, “the devil only knows how many sleepy Kent villages you’d have blown to kingdom come!”
Jay smiled:
“I think it’s time I retired from the field, Tristram,” he said.
“That makes two of us.”
“Three,” added my aunt.
“Goodness,” said my mother, “it looks like Jerzy and I are the only ones who’ll be doing any work around here!” She cut up some more food and fed it to Magnus.
There came a sudden, loud knock at the front door. Who on earth could it be at that time of night? There it was again, even louder and more assertive than the time before. My father got up from the table, adjusting his beret and I couldn’t resist following him.
He opened up and stood there, not saying a word. Seized with insatiable curiosity, I ducked under his arm to get a better look.
It was the police. Lots and lots of police. Blue lights were flashing like billy-o and sirens were blaring and what looked like simply hundreds of men - in and out of uniform and many wearing inexplicable sunglasses - were massing on the beach. Sergeant Riley stepped forward in his brown suit.
“You left a message with Scotland Yard switchboard, Miss Stone,” he said, bending his neck to address me under my father’s arm.
“Oh. Hello there. Yes, I suppose I did. But you’re much too late, Sergeant Riley. It all blew up yesterday, didn’t they tell you? The local police dealt with it all through the night and . .”
“The local police!” He interrupted. “But . . we’ve come all this way and . . I’ve brought the CIA and everything!”
I gazed, blankly, at all those policemen and several men sporting inexplicable sunglasses nodded, blankly, back at me.
“I’m sorry,” said my father, very politely, “but I’m afraid you have disturbed us in the middle of the Shabbat meal. You are welcome to come back another day.”
He made an attempt to close the door, but the handsome, brown-suited policeman stuck his foot in it.
“What? You’ve got a nerve, when we’ve come all this way!” Sergeant Riley was losing his cool. “I mean, God Almighty!”
“God?” Said my father. “Why if God is not in food, then he is nowhere at all.”
And he shut the door firmly, bolting it from the inside.
We went back to the dining-room and I hovered, for a moment, on the threshold, watching them all eat beef and drink wine and look happy and thoughtful and sad and interested and happy again. The silver candle-sticks glowed on the table.
“Come and sit by me, Rosa, man,” Magnus called from the chaise-longue, his enormous, ginger cat asleep on his plaster casts.
Jay glanced up from his beef and offered me his lovely smile:
“Rosa?”
I sighed.
“I won’t be a sec.”
I went over to my little brother and tickled his neck.
“Gerrof!” He squirmed, and I let him punch me.
I caught Major Dyminge’s singular, blue eye - so fierce, yet so kind - and I nodded.
Then I went to make my phone call, fetched my carpet bag and stood outside - beneath the same stars - waiting for the taxi to arrive.
THE END
* * *
[1] Paul Nash (1889-1946). British artist, a Modernist and Surrealist greatly influenced by the British landscape. Also a prominent war artist in both WW1 and WW2, painting some of the most powerful images of war that we have.
[2] Ernest Bevin (1881-1951). British trade union leader, Labour politician and statesman. Minister of Labour in the war-time coalition government, where he improved wages and working conditions for ordinary people. Foreign Secretary in the post-war Labour government, where he acknowledged that Britain’s efforts to maintain its place among the global powers, to hold onto its Empire and to subsidise its considerable armed forces, was leading it towards bankruptcy. Bevin was pragmatic enough to negotiate financial support from America, to withdraw from India and the Middle East and to support the beginning of NATO. In other words, he changed foreign policy in a way that still influences the UK today.
[3] John Birks ‘Dizzy’ Gillespie (1917-1993). US virtuoso jazz trumpeter, bandleader and composer, known for his skill at improvisation.
[4] US musician Bill Haley (1925-1981) was one of the first white musicians to popularize rock and roll with his band, Bill Haley & His Comets. Shake, Rattle and Roll and Rock Around the Clock struck a chord with the new teenagers all around the world, although Rock Around the Clock only took off in the UK after the release of the first teen high school movie Blackboard Jungle in 1955, where it was played over the opening credits.
[5] The USA, UK and Canada formed the Manhattan Project to develop and manufacture the first atomic bombs during WWII.
[6] Dame Peggy Ashcroft (1907-1991), English actress renowned for her Shakespearean heroines among many other wonderful performances. She played Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night many times, but Rosa would have seen the 1950 production at the Old Vic.
[7] Chesney ‘Chet’ Baker (1929-1988) charismatic US jazz musician associated with West Coast Jazz. Baker played the trumpet and flugelhorn, but was also known for his striking vocals.
[8] Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) and Sir Anthony Eden (1897-1977) British politicians, Prime Ministers and members of the Conservative party.
[9] The Marshall Plan (1948-1952), in which the US and Canada gave economic support to help war-damaged western Europe get back on its feet.
[10] The Korean War (1950-1953), came about as a result of the division of Korea after WWII, when Japan surrendered and the Allies created a border between North and South Korea at the 38th Parallel. Tension mounted when the United Nations sided with South Korea and Russia and China with North Korea, in a classic Cold War stand-off.
[11] Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), leader of the Soviet Union from the 1920’s until his death and one of the world’s most murderous dictators.
[12] British Film Studios.
[13] Bond. James Bond. Ian Fleming’s superspy owned a pale blue Aston Martin, of course.
[14] Sir Joseph Bazelgette (1819-1891) one of Britain’s most celebrated civil engineers, remembered primarily for designing and building the London sewer system, thereby saving many lives. Bazelgette began the project after what became known as ‘The Great Stink’ of 1858 when warm weather produced such a foul miasma from the River Thames – where all London sewage had hitherto been dumped – that the entire city was choked.
[15] Chancery Lane deep shelter was never used by the public but became the emergency command HQ for various government bodies, including the ‘Inter Services Research Bureau’- a branch of MI6 that aided the Resistance in German-occupied countries.
[16] Sir Roger Bannister (born 1929) is an English athlete and doctor who ran the first mile under four minutes in 1954 (3 minutes 59.4 seconds, to be precise), while he was also practis
ing as a junior doctor.
[17] The British Board of Film Censors was set up in 1912 to monitor standards in films nationally. Fears of political propaganda in the war years changed to concerns over sex and violence in the 1950’s, but, by the 1980’s the name had been changed to the British Board of Film Classification in an attempt to distance themselves from the idea of censorship and that name remains today.
[18] Diana Dors (1931-1984) home-grown, British, blonde bombshell film star. By the mid-Fifties she was known as ‘Britain’s answer to Marilyn Monroe’. However, being born in 1931, she was only fourteen years younger than Kathleen.
[19] Kathleen’s favourite Polish café is actually Daquise, which still remains on the same site near South Kensington tube station.
[20] Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens is a statue of J.M. Barrie’s famous character by the sculptor Sir George Frampton, which was erected near the Long Water in 1912 at the site in which Peter Pan landed after he flew out of the window in The Little White Bird. It has long been a landmark for London children.
[21] George Orwell was the pen-name of British author, journalist and essayist Eric Blair (1903-1950). Best known for his Socialism and concern with social justice as exemplified in his most famous novels, Animal Farm(1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four(1949), he was also one of the most important left-wing commentators on all of the political and cultural issues of his day. In his 1945 essay ‘You and the Atomic Bomb’ for the Tribune newspaper, he discussed the post-war future living in the shadow of nuclear war, the “peace that is no peace”, which he termed a “permanent cold war”. This was the first use of the term to describe relations between the United Nations and the Communist Bloc.
[22] Punch, or the London Charivari, was a British satirical magazine that was first published in 1841 and became immensely successful. However, by the Fifties it was in decline and, though it continued to languish in dentist’s waiting-rooms for the rest of the century, it’s poor circulation figures finally killed it off for good in 2002.
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