In Search of Love, Money & Revenge

by Hilary Bailey

  ‘You’re from up north, aren’t you?’ said Les.

  Melanie’s nerve failed her. She went back into the kitchen and returned with a grim-faced Annie. ‘I’d prefer it if you would let my waitress get on with her job,’ she said.

  Dowell looked up. ‘I’m concerned about her conditions of employment, that’s all.’

  ‘So am I,’ Annie said. ‘And I don’t want her harassed by the male customers.’

  Les drew himself up in his seat. ‘I am Councillor Leslie Dowell. I represent McCorquodale ward on Kenton Council. I perceive that girl to be an under-age northerner—’

  ‘Well, Councillor Dowell,’ Annie said firmly, ‘she’s here with her mother’s permission, helping out. I appreciate your concern, but there’s nothing wrong with her situation. She lives with me, she goes to school in term-time, she’s invaluable to my business. She’s paid for what she does.’ She paused. ‘I’m afraid I misinterpreted your motives in speaking to her.’

  ‘Understood,’ said Les Dowell. ‘I hope I didn’t frighten her.’

  ‘Well, you did,’ Annie said. And, having taken their order, returned to the kitchen.

  ‘Well, now you’ve done your bit for the youngsters the system’s exploiting, Les,’ Joe said, ‘can we get down to business?’ He had not had very much hope of turning Les Dowell in the first place, but Les now had to know what was going on and he had to get a rough idea, if possible, about what Les and the comrades would do to obstruct the project.

  In the kitchen Annie hissed, ‘Keep listening, Melanie. If you hear the word Savernake, tell me what they say.’

  Melanie served pâté to Joe Banks, produced the half grapefruit asked for by Les Dowell and heard Banks’s opening gambit.

  ‘What I’m going to tell you, Les, concerns a new project in Kenton which could net us seven million, and jobs for upwards of two hundred people, some permanent. Try to think about that as I go along.’

  There was no expression on Les Dowell’s lean face. He removed the cherry from his grapefruit and put it on the side of his plate.

  Banks continued, ‘We’ve agreed some plans for a building project, the Savernake Village project. A small area, filled with homes and other facilities, all bringing work and prosperity to Kenton.’

  Les Dowell stared expressionlessly. ‘A yuppie compound,’ he said. ‘Where are we, whoever we may be, putting it?’

  ‘It’ll involve Savernake Park.’ Banks paused.

  ‘You want to sell off Savernake Park,’ Dowell stated flatly. ‘The only green space for miles around. And, ah,’ he said, ‘you’ll have to get rid of the estate.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ Banks said steadily.

  ‘Got the plans, Joe?’

  ‘I can let you have them.’ There was a pause.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ said Dowell, ‘this plan isn’t just a gleam in your eye. How far has it gone?’

  ‘There’s to be an announcement next week.’

  ‘Who’s making it?’

  ‘The company concerned and Kenton Council.’

  Dowell let rip. His voice rose. ‘This is a scandal, Joe Banks. You’ve been working on all this for, what, three months, four, since Christmas? Of course you have. In secrecy. Without informing councillors, departments—’

  ‘Les,’ Banks said, trying to quieten him down. ‘You know the position. The borough’s crumbling round our ears. We can’t even touch the money on sales of housing for repairs on housing stock. We’ve got the second highest rate of unemployment in London. People are living like pigs in Kenton. Walls sweat, roofs leak, kids get ill, lighting on the estates is broken, Telecom’s given us a quota of phone boxes they’re prepared to repair. We’ve had to put all the old people in Golightly House into bed and breakfast. The social services are cracking – we haven’t even got enough people to inspect, let alone maintain services. The kids at the Fairweather children’s home would be better off in prison, as I understand it – don’t give me your socialist principles. In this climate, all it spells is human misery. It’s getting as bad as the Depression round here, you know it. Sitting on your bum talking about how bad it is isn’t going to do anything. What we need is money and jobs. This project will give us cash in hand, no big constraints on how we use it. It’ll produce jobs in the short and long term, and bring trade to the area.’

  ‘I take all those points, Joe,’ Dowell said, ‘but you’re going to sell off what was paid for by Kenton and belongs to Kenton, including their homes, without any kind of consultation with the people’s elected representatives.’ He shook his head. ‘No, Joe. Not without a fight. I want to know who’s in charge of this project.’

  ‘We are. Stop shouting, Les. You’re not making a speech here.’

  ‘Where’s the seven million coming from?’ demanded Dowell. ‘Is that a secret too?’

  ‘The company’s called Savernake Developments,’ Banks said.

  ‘That tells me precisely nothing. Are you going to give me details, or do you want me to convene a special council meeting? Well, don’t answer that question, I’m going to do it anyway. Thanks for the grapefruit, Joe.’ Dowell stood up, pulled a pound out of his pocket and slammed it down on the table before walking out of the restaurant.

  Banks gazed after him, then looked down, drank from his wineglass, spread a little pâté on his toast. He sighed. This was very much what he’d expected. But he was ready and they weren’t. The letters to tenants would go round in a few days, the whole plan would be public next week, the bulldozers would probably start on the park in September, while the remaining, unyielding Savernake Estate tenants slowly crumbled. He’d go home shortly and await the furious call from Mrs Roxanne Fuller, Mayor of Kenton.

  A complete silence, imposed by Annie, reigned in the kitchen. Les Dowell had not spoken quietly. They had heard everything. Even the celebrating salesmen had intermittently fallen silent at his angry speech, delivered in a voice accustomed to hitting the back of the hall, and piercing confusion at council meetings. Now one of them shouted, ‘We asked for more bread half an hour ago. And this man wants seconds of duck, greedy pig. You dead in there?’

  ‘If the kiss of life’s what’s needed …’ said another. They laughed.

  ‘I’ll see to them, Melanie,’ Annie said. ‘You go and ask the other man what he’d like to follow.’ She pasted on a smile and went over to the table where the four men sat, ‘Bit of a row over there,’ said one. ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘You can’t hear anything from the kitchen,’ Annie said blandly.

  ‘You’re telling me, darling,’ said one. ‘So now you’re here, one more duck, and simultaneously, we’ll take a look at the sweet trolley.’

  ‘D’you do flambés?’ asked another.

  ‘Not at the moment, unfortunately,’ Annie lied. ‘The equipment’s under repair. We can do it in the kitchen and bring it to you, flaming.’

  ‘Good. I like hot stuff,’ he said.

  Annie smiled, and went away. She made a face at Abigail.

  ‘He wants salmon, and a phone,’ Melanie reported of Joe Banks.

  ‘Well, just this once,’ Annie said. ‘Take him the handset from the portable, and we’ll see if we can hear anything.’

  ‘A Mrs Fuller. He’s going round to see her. It sounds as if she’s angry,’ Melanie reported a little later.

  Now the salesmen, as boys will, all wanted a go with the phone. The restaurant resounded with laughter.

  14

  The Savernake War Begins

  The following Sunday, Vanessa, Alec, Joanne and Melanie and her friend Viv and Annie all went for a picnic in Savernake Park. The temperature was in the 90°s and the grass was covered with little groups of people, some lying getting suntans, playing the radio, or tapes. There were children eating ices, playing on the swings further down, people walking dogs, losing control of dogs, all in bright sunshine.

  ‘There must be hundreds here,’ Vanessa said. ‘Oh – get away!’ Alec was crying because an Alsa
tian was trying to eat his ice-cream. Vanessa looked round for the owner. No one seemed to be in charge. ‘Oh, God, look at that!’ she appealed as the dog stopped four feet away, squatted and trotted on, leaving a pile of steaming excrement.

  A small girl in a baseball cap and party frock sat down beside her. ‘Disgusting, isn’t it?’ she said.

  A boy swinging a big ghetto blaster walked past calling, ‘Charlie!’ above the music. A boy and two girls in shorts and T-shirts shouted back from the plaid rug on which they were reclining. Annie lay on her back, looking at a bird flying overhead.

  ‘I like it a little bit better at Froggett’s,’ Joanne said to her. ‘You can’t get ice-creams, but the animals are nicer and it’s more quieter. It’s sometimes nice when it’s really quiet and you can only hear birds.’

  ‘This isn’t bad, for the middle of a city,’ Annie said. She turned her head, glimpsing the two white towers of the Savernake Estate to her right, across the huge sweep of grass covered with people. When the great house of the Rodwells had been torn down in the fifties it had been derelict, one corner sheared off by a war-time bomb. No one at that time had questioned the decision to pull down a stately home in order to build the Savernake Estate on the site. Now, the house would be preserved. In the fifties, Annie imagined, people were accustomed to the idea of bombed buildings; reconstruction was a priority, the whole city must have been full of sites ripe for redevelopment.

  Ben Gathercole was putting a print of the old Savernake House in the Kenton Post. It had been a long, low, eighteenth-century building with big windows all along the ground floor, a porticoed entrance and a semi-circle of stone in front for the carriages. It had been built broadside on to the river and Annie wondered why they’d placed it deliberately to avoid facing the water. The Thames wouldn’t have been banked by then. Was it to discourage people who might see the lighted windows and come ashore to rob them, to avoid direct blasts of the smell from the sewage-filled river in summer, or fear of facing that disease-carrying miasma said to come from such rivers?

  It must have been nice in summer, Annie thought. Not so jolly in winter, with fog coming thickly from the water, and wet, dank fields all round. Today you could hardly see the river for vast office blocks. Now, she reflected, the council was trying to sell off the park. Having passed from the wealthy Rodwells to the people of Kenton, it seemed the park was to change hands again, back into the hands of the wealthy, to Nigel Fellows and his shareholders.

  Annie was recalled to the present by Joanne’s shrill voice, ‘Can we have our picnic now, or can me and Viv go over to the kiosk for some crisps? Viv didn’t have any breakfast, and we’re thirsty. Alec’s thirsty.’

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ Alec said, getting to his feet.

  Vanessa, hunched over, stared at the rug they were sitting on.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Annie asked.

  ‘I’m tired,’ Vanessa said.

  ‘You’re always saying that,’ remarked Joanne.

  ‘I wonder why,’ remarked Vanessa.

  Annie opened the picnic basket. Their neighbours cast covert looks at the professional-looking boxes of salad, salmon, pâté, the slices of duck and the French bread. The children, fed up with an expensive diet, weren’t pleased. Joanne found it nearly impossible to discover anything she liked, but settled for smoked salmon made into sandwiches. ‘Why can’t we have normal food sometimes?’ Her eye followed her mother’s, observing Ben’s form weaving through people on the grass.

  ‘Him again,’ remarked Joanne, not pleased, knowing her mother’s attention would now go to the intruder.

  ‘Wow,’ said Ben, arriving and looking admiringly at the feast. He sat down and helped himself. ‘The Mayor’s furious,’ he said. ‘I’ve just been to see her. Nice woman – came over here from Jamaica in 1957, with small children; her husband died almost immediately so she got a job in a launderette with a flat above. Now she owns several and her four daughters are all teachers …’

  ‘Yes – well …’ said Vanessa. ‘What’s she got in mind?’

  ‘She can’t do much. It’s up to the council. It isn’t even on the agenda yet. Joe Banks just contacted her, wanting it put on as any other business, an obvious attempt so slip it through before anyone noticed. But Les Dowell had already phoned her. She was furious. Banks has been working on it for ages, that’s obvious. The phones must be ringing hot all over Kenton. She’s dead against the scheme. When I left she was ringing Willie Carlyle, the local MP.’

  ‘Old Sam Abbott must think it’s going to go through,’ Vanessa said. ‘He phoned again this morning, to see if we wanted to sell the Arcadia. He’s pushing us, now. Cup of tea?’

  ‘Nothing I like better than a smoked salmon sandwich and a cup of tea,’ Ben said comfortably.

  ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do,’ Vanessa continued. ‘We’re still losing money. But, of course, once this yuppie paradise goes up, the Arcadia could be flavour of the month. I think we’ll have to sell, though.’

  ‘Let’s hang on,’ Annie said. ‘It’s nerve-racking, but let’s just give it a little longer. He’s agreed we can wait until next week. We’ll decide then.’

  ‘Pretty good, though,’ Ben said. ‘As a plot. Abbott fixes the plans – I’m sure he has – then offers to buy the restaurant. I wonder what else he’s getting out of it?’ He jumped up. ‘I’d better run. I’m going to see Les Dowell and Betsey Jones, to get an update. Les is talking about a riot—Hallo,’ he said in surprise, ‘what’s this?’

  An old lady with a letter in her hand was advancing across the grass propelled by a big man in a stretched T-shirt who led her up to Annie’s and Vanessa’s group. ‘Are you the reporter from the local paper?’ he asked Ben. ‘Thought I spotted you. This lady’s had a letter from a company and she’s upset.’

  The woman was about seventy, small and bent, wearing an old black skirt and a well-ironed flowered blouse. She said, ‘I’ve had this letter pushed through my door. Can you explain it? What’s happening?’

  Ben scanned it and looked up. ‘They’re moving fast,’ he said, startled.

  ‘What’s it all about?’ asked the woman. ‘It’s Sunday afternoon. I was so shocked when I got it I just came straight out to talk to the caretaker – what are they going to do?’

  ‘Do you know what’s going on?’ demanded the big man. ‘This is Mrs Walters, by the way. I’m the caretaker at Rodwell House. Harold Smith. You did a story on our insect plague. Can you explain what’s happening?’

  The letter, headed Savernake Developments, said that, subject to council approval, the Savernake Estate was to be sold. Offers would be made to home owners on the estate. Tenants would be offered alternative accommodation by the council. Their rent arrears, if any, were subject to negotiation with the council and might be waived. In addition, Savernake Developments was prepared to pay home owners and tenants willing to move the sum of £2000 per household to cover expenses.

  ‘I’ve never been behind with my rent in my life,’ protested Mrs Walters. ‘They’re selling the flats, aren’t they? They can’t do that, can they?’

  ‘The council’s got to agree to a vote,’ Annie told her. ‘Haven’t you got a tenants’ association?’

  Mrs Walters ignored Annie. ‘I don’t know what my daughter’s going to say about this. It isn’t right, being shoved about from pillar to post like this at my age. What’s this about a vote?’

  ‘If the council agrees to allow it, there has to be a vote by all the tenants to see if they want the estate sold off. She needs to sit down,’ Annie said to Vanessa.

  The caretaker said, ‘Why don’t you all go back to this lady’s flat? Then this gentleman,’ he looked at Mrs Walters, ‘can talk to you. He’s from the paper, people should know about this.’

  ‘You go,’ Annie said to Vanessa. ‘We’ll stay and have our picnic.’

  Ben, Vanessa, Margaret Walters and the caretaker began to walk towards the estate through the people on the grass. The two towers of the Sav
ernake Estate flats came closer. Through the gaps in the buildings a courtyard could be seen in which cars were parked. Facing inwards, on the right and left of the courtyard, were low blocks of flats separated from the cars by a strip of green. Beyond the big archway between Rodwell House and Savernake House stood a row of small houses, with little front gardens. Behind, out of sight, was Savernake Road.

  ‘You make her a cup of tea,’ the caretaker advised Vanessa. ‘I’ve got to get back and sort out the hot water.’

  ‘Any chance of seeing you later?’ asked Ben.

  He shook his head. ‘Not me, mate.’

  ‘Worried about the job?’

  ‘What would you think? I’ve got to keep my head down till we see what’s happening. Sorry,’ he added. ‘As a matter of fact, I think it’s disgusting. Don’t quote me.’ He ducked away.

  The courtyard was littered, the lower parts of the building ragged with graffiti: the names of football clubs and the slogans ‘NF’ and ‘Troops Out’. Several brand-new cars were parked in the centre and in one a large, thirsty Rottweiler barked.

  ‘I’m on the first floor,’ said Mrs Walters as the group reached Rodwell House. ‘We can try for the lift but I expect it’s stuck on one of the floors. If it’s not broken there’s someone on the eighth floor who wedges the doors open for their own convenience. I don’t dare ask who it is. Well,’ she said, when they’d climbed the unclean stairs, ‘here we are …’ She opened a door on the balcony corridor overlooking the park and led her visitors through a narrow hall and into a neatly furnished sitting room with a three-piece suite, a large television and family photographs on a big table covered with a cloth.

  Ben took out his notebook while Vanessa was making a cup of tea in the kitchen. ‘I’m sixty-seven,’ Mrs Walters said. ‘I’ve had three children all brought up in this flat. My husband’s been dead fifteen years.’ She had a job cleaning two of the shops in Savernake Road. ‘I’m slow but I’m thorough,’ she said. ‘I’ve done my best all my life – and now look.’ She was recovering her nerve.